in a pause.

"That we 'aven't!" said Mr. Witherspoon. "We 'aven't thought of 'er. We
ain't thought nothing of either of you."

"Ain't you been 'ome to-day?" asked Fulcher over a tankard.

"If one of those brasted birds 'ave pecked 'er," began Mr. Witherspoons
and left the full horror to their unaided imaginations....

It appeared to the meeting at the time that it would be an interesting
end to an eventful day to go on with Skinner and see if anything _had_
happened to Mrs. Skinner. One never knows what luck one may have when
accidents are at large. But Skinner, standing at the bar and drinking
his hot gin and water, with one eye roving over the things at the back
of the bar and the other fixed on the Absolute, missed the psychological
moment.

"I thuppothe there 'athen't been any trouble with any of thethe big
waptheth to-day anywhere?" he asked, with an elaborate detachment of
manner.

"Been too busy with your 'ens," said Fulcher.

"I thuppothe they've all gone in now anyhow," said Skinner.

"What--the 'ens?"

"I wath thinking of the waptheth more particularly," said Skinner.

And then, with, an air of circumspection that would have awakened
suspicion in a week-old baby, and laying the accent heavily on most of
the words he chose, he asked, "I _thuppothe nobody_ 'athn't '_eard_ of
any other _big_ thingth, about, 'ave they? Big _dogth_ or _catth_ or
anything of _that_ thort? Theemth to me if thereth big henth and big
waptheth comin' on--"

He laughed with a fine pretence of talking idly.

But a brooding expression came upon the faces of the Hickleybrow men.
Fulcher was the first to give their condensing thought the concrete
shape of words.

"A cat to match them 'ens--" said Fulcher.

"Ay!" said Witherspoon, "a cat to match they 'ens."

"'Twould be a tiger," said Fulcher.

"More'n a tiger," said Witherspoon....

When at last Skinner followed the lonely footpath over the swelling
field that separated Hickleybrow from the sombre pine-shaded hollow in
whose black shadows the gigantic canary-creeper grappled silently with
the Experimental Farm, he followed it alone.

He was distinctly seen to rise against the sky-line, against the warm
clear immensity of the northern sky--for so far public interest followed
him--and to descend again into the night, into an obscurity from which
it would seem he will nevermore emerge. He passed--into a mystery. No
one knows to this day what happened to him after he cr