“Eh, Master Austin,” said Lubin, emerging from among the rhododendrons, “if I’d known you was a-listening I’d ’a faked up something from a French opera for you.  Why, that’s an old song as I’ve known ever since I was that high—­’Tom of Exeter’ they calls it.  It’s a rare favourite wi’ the maids down in the parts I come from.”

“Shows their good taste,” said Austin.  “It’s awfully pretty.  Who was Tom Dove, and why did he come to town?”

“Nay, I can’t tell,” replied Lubin.  “Tis some made-up tale, I doubt.  They do say as how he was a tailor.  But there is folks as’ll say anything, you know.”

“A tailor!” exclaimed Austin, scornfully, “That I’m sure he wasn’t.  But oh, Lubin, there is somebody coming to town in a day or two—­somebody I want to find out about.  Do you often go into the town?”

“Eh, well, just o’ times; when there’s anything to take me there,” answered Lubin, vaguely.  “On market-days, every now and again.”

“Oh yes, I know, when you go and sell ducks,” put in Austin.  “Now what I want to know is this.  Have you, within the last three or four weeks, seen a stranger anywhere about?”

“A stranger?” repeated Lubin.  “Ay, that I certainly have.  Any amount o’ strangers.”

“Oh well, yes, of course, how stupid of me!” exclaimed Austin, impatiently.  “There must have been scores and scores.  But I mean a particular stranger—­a certain person in particular, if you understand me.  Anybody whose appearance struck you in any way.”

“Well, but what sort of a stranger?” asked Lubin.  “Can’t you tell me anything about him?  What’d he look like, now?”

“That’s just what I want to find out,” replied Austin.  “If I could describe him I shouldn’t want you to.  All I know is that he’s a sort of elderly gentleman, rather more than fifty.  He may be fifty-five, or getting on for sixty.  Now, isn’t that near enough?  Oh—­and I’m almost sure that he’s a traveller.”

“H’m,” pondered Lubin, leaning on his broom reflectively.  “Well, yes, I did see a sort of elderly gentleman some three or four weeks ago, standing at the bar o’ the ‘Coach-and-Horses.’  What his age might be I couldn’t exactly say, ’cause he was having a drink with his back turned to the door.  But he was a traveller, that I know.”

“A traveller?  I wonder whether that was the one!” exclaimed Austin.  “Had he a dark-brown face?  Or a wooden leg?  Or a scar down one of his cheeks?”

“Not as I see,” answered Lubin, beginning to sweep the lawn.  “But a traveller he was, because the barmaid told me so.  Travelled all over the country in bonnets.”

“Travelled in bonnets?” cried Austin.  “What do you mean, Lubin?  How can a man go travelling about the country in a bonnet?  Had he a bonnet on when you saw him drinking in the bar?”

“Lor’, Master Austin, wherever was you brought up?” exclaimed Lubin, in grave amazement at the youth’s ignorance.  “When a gentleman ‘travels’ in anything, it means he goes about getting orders for it.  Now this here gentleman was agent, I take it, for some big millinery shop in London, and come down here wi’ boxes an’ boxes o’ bonnets, an’ tokes, and all sorts o’ female headgear as women goes about in——­”