This was the answer I received:—­

DEAR SIR,—­In reply to yours of the 13th inst., we remember your visit, but cannot trace having such a picture as you describe in our possession at present.  We believe you dealt with our Mr. James Langford, who joined up in May, 1915, and is not yet demobilised.  He is in Egypt at the moment, we understand, and we are afraid it would take some time to get into communication with him.

    We shall be glad if under the circumstances you will allow the
    matter to rest until his return.

    In any case we are afraid we cannot hold ourselves responsible for
    the picture, unless you can produce a receipt from us proving that
    it reached us.

    We are, Yours obediently,

    pp.  THE FERNDALE GALLERY.

    J.S.

The last paragraph in their letter gave me the impression that they knew they had the picture but had mislaid it.  Meanwhile Panmore seemed so hot on it and I was so badly hit by the War that I thought I would have another shot at recovering it.  So I addressed the Gallery as follows:—­

DEAR SIRS,—­Thanks for your letter, and in reply I should be obliged if you could get another search party out.  I have found a receipt for the picture, signed with a name that might, if straightened out, be James Langford.

My friend is getting quite excited about it, and he is the sort of person one wants to humour.  He is a Lieut.-Colonel, an O.B.E., and, what is more important still, one of the feoffees of Buckley’s Hospital (a fifteenth-century foundation here), and whatever a feoffee may be he is not the kind of man to toy with in a small town like this.

I forgot to mention that there is an inn on the left of the picture, and a girl coming out of it carrying, perhaps, a bran-mash for the horse or some Government dope for the man, and there are some hens, all fully regardant and expectant, at her feet.

    Hoping to hear in the course of a post or two that you have found
    the painting,

    I am, Yours anxiously,

    THEOPHILUS B. PIPER-CARY.

    P.S.—­Don’t forget there’s a cow in the background; a red cow.

Three days later I received a picture (not mine) from the Gallery with this letter:—­

DEAR SIR,—­After a most exhaustive search we have found and send herewith what we believe to be your picture, though it does not quite answer to your description.  It is, however, the only one of which we do not appear to have any record.

    Our Mr. Langford seems likely to be abroad for some months, so
    unless you will accept this picture in settlement of the matter we
    do not see any present way out of the difficulty.

    Confident that, if it is not yours, it is at least just as good,
    we trust that you will agree to cry quits.