cktie down his
breast, and embroidered trousers.

"Why," said Buchanan, "if Knype drop into the Second Division they'll
never pay another dividend! It'll be all up with first-class football in
the Five Towns!"

The interests involved seemed to grow more complicated. And here I had
been in the district nearly four hours without having guessed that the
district was quivering in the tense excitement of gigantic issues! And
here was this Scotch doctor, at whose word the great Myatt would have
declined to play, never saying a syllable about the affair, until a
chance remark from Buchanan loosened his tongue. But all doctors are
strangely secretive. Secretiveness is one of their chief private
pleasures.

"Come and see the pigeons, eh?" said Buchanan.

"Pigeons?" I repeated.

"We give the results of over a hundred matches in our Football Edition,"
said Buchanan, and added: "not counting Rugby."

As we left the room two boys dodged round us into it, bearing telegrams.

In a moment we were, in the most astonishing manner, on a leaden roof of
the _Signal_ offices. High factory chimneys rose over the horizon of
slates on every side, blowing thick smoke into the general murk of the
afternoon sky, and crossing the western crimson with long pennons of
black. And out of the murk there came from afar a blue-and-white pigeon
which circled largely several times over the offices of the _Signal_. At
length it descended, and I could hear the whirr of its strong wings. The
wings ceased to beat and the pigeon slanted downwards in a curve, its
head lower than its wide tail. Then the little head gradually rose and
the tail fell; the curve had changed, the pace slackened; the pigeon was
calculating with all its brain; eyes, wings, tail and feet were being
co-ordinated to the resolution of an intricate mechanical problem. The
pinkish claws seemed to grope--and after an instant of hesitation the
thing was done, the problem solved; the pigeon, with delicious
gracefulness, had established equilibrium on the ridge of a pigeon-cote,
and folded its wings, and was peering about with strange motions of its
extremely movable head. Presently it flew down to the leads, waddled to
and fro with the ungainly gestures of a fat woman of sixty, and
disappeared into the cote. At the same moment the boy who had been
dismissed from the sub-editor's room ran forward and entered the cote by
a wire-screened door.

"Handy things, pigeons!" said the doctor as w