und it, you've
got to carry it, Neddy. Don't mind if it's a bit heavy, do you?"

"I don't want to overstrain myself," said Neddy jocularly, "but I'll do
my best with it, only hope it's there!"

"It must be there. Hasn't got wings, has it? At any rate not till you put
it in your pocket, and go out for an evening with the ladies!"

Neddy paid this pleasantry the tribute of a laugh, but he had one more
business question to ask:

"Where are we to stow the car? How far off?"

"The Sergeant has picked out a big clump of trees, a hundred yards from
the cottage on the Sprotsfield side, and about thirty yards from the
road. Pretty clear going to it, bar the bracken--she'll do it easily.
There she'll lie, snug as you like. As we go by Sprotsfield, the car
won't have to pass the Cottage at all--that's an advantage--and yet it's
not over far to carry the stuff."

"Sounds all right," said Neddy placidly, and with a yawn. "Have a drop?"

"No, I won't--and I wish you wouldn't, Neddy. It makes you bad-tempered,
and a man doesn't want to be bad-tempered on these jobs."

"Take the wheel a second while I have a drop," said Neddy, just for all
the world as if his friend had not spoken. He unscrewed the top of a
large flask and took a very considerable "drop." It was only after he had
done this with great deliberation that he observed good-naturedly, "And
you go to hell, Mike! It's dark, ain't it? That's a bit of all right."

He did not speak again till they were near Sprotsfield. "This
Beaumaroy--queer name, ain't it?--he's a big chap, ain't he, Mike?"

"Pretty fair, but, Lord love you, a baby beside yourself."

"Well, now, you told me something the Sergeant said about a man as
was (Neddy, unlike his friend, occasionally tripped in his English)
really big."

"Oh, that's Naylor--Captain Naylor. But he's not at the cottage; we're
not likely to meet him, praise be!"

"Rather wish we were! I want a little bit of exercise," said Neddy.

"Well, I don't know but what Beaumaroy might give you that. The
Sergeant's got tales about him at the war."

"Oh, blast these soldiers--they ain't no good." In what he himself
regarded as his spare hours, that is to say, the daytime hours wherein
the ordinary man labors, Neddy was a highly skilled craftsman, whose only
failing was a tendency to be late in the morning and to fall ill about
the festive seasons of the year. He made lenses, and, in spite of the
failing, his work had been deemed to b