cave with its buried
hoard, no ruin tottered above a secret treasure-chamber. For himself
he did not mind; it was all one to him whether he hunted his prey in
the Champs Elysees or the long, straggling street of Farndon-Pryze.
There were men in both places; and, though the methods of enraging them
were different, they grew crimson to much the same fieriness. He
found, indeed, an angry Frenchman more entertaining than an angry
Englishman, but he was no epicure in sensations: only, he liked them
exciting. But he would fain have discovered treasure for the sake of
his father who, as he well knew, did not find in Farndon-Pryze the
entertainment which satisfied his simpler, boyish heart.

As he scanned the unsatisfactory landscape, he heard the sound of
hoofs, and looking round, saw James Alloway, a young farmer of the
neighbourhood, riding along the highway. His face brightened; the
coast was clear; it was the very morning to play toreador. In a breath
he was through the hedge, and on the way to the village. He approached
it after the manner of a red Indian, only pausing to cut a switch from
a hedge. He had a score to settle with Josiah Wilby, a boy whose
talebearing had procured him his last, well-earned whacking. Fortune
favoured him: he spied his prey playing in careless security with two
other boys on the village green; crept between two cottages; and was
out on him or ever he was aware of the coming of an avenger. At the
sight of Tinker, Josiah bolted for home; but he had not gone twenty
yards before the stinging switch was curling round him. He ran the
harder, howling and roaring; and Tinker accompanied him to the door of
his father's cottage. As the roaring Josiah rushed in, the infuriated
Mrs. Wilby rushed out, and Tinker withdrew. From a convenient
distance, he raised his hat, and protested his regret at having had to
instruct her son in the first principles of honour. Mrs. Wilby took
his politeness as an insult, and with a rustic disregard of his pretty
manners called him a limb, and threatened him with merciless punishment
on the return of her husband. Tinker shrugged his shoulders, spread
out his hands, gestures he had acquired in France, and hurried off on
his main errand.

He came swiftly to a small field in which there browsed a large and
solitary ram, by name Billy, Tinker's playfellow in the game of
bull-fighting. With a somewhat unfair casting of the star part, Tinker
always played the ma