aking which he had received in his
fall, and partly to the miserable hours of anxiety and watching that
had succeeded to it. The villagers of course attributed his appearance
to the torment of a guilty conscience, and no one was more careful to
dwell on this explanation than Mrs. Mugford, with a vehemence which
surprised even Mrs. Fry, who knew the sharpness of her tongue better
than her neighbours.

The Corporal took no more heed of the villagers' coldness than before;
for a new matter had come forward to occupy his thoughts. While he was
walking one day with the children through the wood above the village,
Dick suddenly stopped and said that he had certainly seen a man
slinking off the path into the covert; and the Corporal at once hurried
to the spot in the hope that it might be the idiot. Making his way
through the thicket he presently came upon a man lying down in some
bracken and evidently anxious to conceal himself. The fellow was
ragged, unkempt and bearded, but he was not the idiot, and he seemed
terrified at being discovered, stammering out something about meaning
no harm, and begging to be allowed to go. The Corporal sent the
children a little apart, felt the man's pockets to be sure that he was
not a poacher, and bade him begone and think himself lucky to escape so
easily.

"I've seen you before," he said, looking hard at him, "and I shall know
you again. You know you have no business here, and if I catch you
again, it will be the worse for you." But though he let the man go, he
puzzled himself all day to think where he had seen him before.

And now the annual fair at Kingstoke, the little town that lay nearest
to Ashacombe, was at hand, and all kinds of strange people were to be
seen on the road. There were hawkers and cheapjacks with persuasive
tongues, which the villagers found difficult to resist; swarthy gipsies
with gaudy red and yellow handkerchiefs, whom they kept at a safe
distance; and great lumbering vans containing fat ladies, and learned
pigs and two-headed calves, which roused their curiosity greatly.
Finally one day a loud noise of drumming brought Dick and Elsie flying
down the road, and there was a recruiting serjeant as large as life,
with red coat, white trousers and plumed shako hung with ribbons, and
with him a drummer and a fifer. The two last had stopped playing by
the time that the children reached them, and were apparently not best
pleased, for Mrs. Mugford had flown out