em was a little less. Neither looked round, and once the boy's feet
were actually on the man's shadow; for half the streets were raked with
level sunlight, but the other half were ladders of dusk with rungs of
light at the gaps between the houses. All were dustier, dirtier, and
emptier than is ever the case by night or day, because this was neither
one nor the other, though the sun was up to make the most of dust, dirt,
and emptiness. It was before even the cleansing hour of the scavenger and
the water-cart. A dead cat was sprawling horribly in one deserted reach
of wood-paving. And a motor-car at full speed in a thoroughfare calling
itself King's Road, which Pocket was about to cross, had at all events the
excuse of a visible mile of asphalt to itself.

Pocket drew back to let it pass, without looking twice at the car itself,
which indeed was disguised out of knowledge in the promiscuous mire of
many countries; but the red eyes behind the driver's goggles were not so
slow. Down went his feet on clutch and brake without a second's interval;
round spun the car in a skid that tore studs from the tyres, and fetched
her up against the kerb with a shivered wheel. Pocket started forward
with a cry; but at that moment a ponderous step fell close behind him; his
arm was seized, and he was dragged in custody across the road.

"Your boy, I think!" cried one whom he had never seen before, and did not
now, being locked already in the motorist's arms.

"When did you find him?" the father asked when he was man enough, still
patting Pocket's shoulders as if he were a dog.

"Only last night when I wired."

"And where?"

"In the house where you and I couldn't make ourselves heard."

The schoolboy flared up through all his emotion.

"Why, I never saw you before this minute!"

"Well, I've had my eye on you, more or less, for a day or two."

"Then why didn't you wire before?" demanded Mr. Upton, quite ready to mask
his own emotion with a little heat. "I didn't get it till after nine
o'clock--too late for the evening train--but I wasn't going to waste three
hours with a forty-horser eating its head off! So here I am, on my way to
the address you gave."

"It was plumb opposite Baumgartner's. I mounted guard there the very
night you left. He came out twenty minutes ago, and your boy after him!"

"But what does it all mean, Thrush? What on earth were you doing there,
my dear boy?"

The notes of anger and affection wer