hter.

"What do you mean?" I cried, in utter bewilderment at this catalogue of
my friend's misfortunes.

"Oh, don't ask me. Old Jack Smith!"

"He's not old," said I, "not very, only about sixteen."

This was too much for my driver, who clapped me on the back, and as soon
as he could recover his utterance cried, "My eyes, you _will_ find him
growed!"

"Has he?" said I, half envious, for I wasn't growing very quickly.

"Ain't he! He's growed a lump since you was at school together," roared
my eccentric friend.

"What is he doing?" I asked, anxious to hear something more definite of
poor Jack.

"Oh, the same old game, on'y he goes at it quieter nor he used. Last
Sunday that there bell-ringing regular blowed him out, the old covey."

A light suddenly dawned upon me.

"Bell-ringing; old covey. That's not the Jack Smith I mean!"

"What!" roared my companion, "you don't mean him?"

"No, who?" cried I, utterly bewildered.

"Why, old Jack Smith, the sexton, what was eighty-two last Christmas!
You wasn't at school with him! Oh, I say; here, take the reins: I can't
drive straight no longer!" and he fairly collapsed into the bottom of
the cart.

This little diversion, amusing as it was, did not have the effect of
allaying my anxiety to hear something about my old schoolfellow.

My driver, however, although he knew plenty of Smiths in the town, knew
no one answering to Jack's description; and, now that Packworth was in
sight, I began to feel rather foolish to have come so far on such a
wild-goose chase.

Packworth is a large town with about 40,000 inhabitants; and when,
having bidden farewell to the good-natured baker, I found myself in its
crowded bustling streets, any chance of running against my old chum
seemed very remote indeed.

I went to the post-office where my two letters had been addressed, the
one I wrote a year ago, just after Jack's expulsion, and the other
written last week from Brownstroke.

"Have you any letters addressed to `J'?" I asked.

The clerk fumbled over the contents of a pigeon-hole, from which he
presently drew out my last letter and gave it to me.

"Wait a bit," said he, as I was taking it up, and turning to leave the
office. "Wait a bit."

He went back to the pigeon-hole, and after another sorting produced,
very dusty and dirty, my first letter. "That's for `J' too," said he.

Then Jack had never been to Packworth, or got my letter, posted at such
risk. He must hav