“In short, he was a commercial traveller,” said Austin, very mildly.  “You see, my dear Lubin, we have been talking of different things.  I wasn’t thinking of a gentleman who hawks haberdashery.  When I said traveller, I meant a man who goes tramping across Africa, and shoots elephants, and gets snowed up at the North Pole, and has all sorts of uncomfortable and quite incredible adventures.  They always have faces as brown as an old trunk, and generally limp when they walk.  That’s the sort of person I’m looking out for.  You haven’t seen anyone like that, have you?”

“Nay—­nary a one,” said Lubin, shaking his head.  “Would he have been putting up at one o’ the inns, now, or staying long wi’ some o’ the gentry?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” acknowledged Austin.

“Might as well go about looking for a ram wi’ five feet,” remarked Lubin.  “Some things you can’t find ’cause they don’t exist, and other things you can’t find ’cause there’s too many of ’em.  And as you don’t know nothing about this gentleman, and wouldn’t know him if you met him in the street permiscuous, I take it you’ll have to wait to see what he looks like till he turns up again of his own accord.  ’Tain’t in reason as you can go up to every old gentleman with a brown face as you never see before an’ ask him if he’s ever been snowed up at the North Pole and why he hasn’t got a wooden leg.  He’d think, as likely as not, as you was trying to get a rise out of him.  Don’t you know what the name may be, neither?”

“Oh yes, I do, of course,” responded Austin.  “He’s a Mr Ogilvie.”

“Never heard of ‘im,” said Lubin.  “Might find out at one o’ the inns if any party o’ that name’s been staying there, but I doubt they wouldn’t remember.  Folks don’t generally stay more’n one night, you see, just to have a look at the old market-place and the church, and then off they go next morning and don’t leave no addresses.  Th’ only sort as stays a day or two are the artists, and they’ll stay painting here for more’n a week at a time.  It may ‘a been one o’ them.”

“I wonder!” exclaimed Austin, struck by the idea.  “Perhaps he’s an artist, after all; artists do travel, I know.  I never thought of that.  However, it doesn’t matter.  It’s only some old friend of Aunt Charlotte’s, and he’s coming to call on her soon, so it isn’t worth bothering about meanwhile.”

He therefore dismissed the matter from his mind, and set about the far more profitable employment of fortifying himself by a morning’s devotion to garden-craft, both manual and mental, against the martyrdom (as he called it) that he was to undergo that afternoon.  For Aunt Charlotte had insisted on his accompanying her to tea at the vicarage, and this was a function he detested with all his heart.  He never knew whom he might meet there, and always went in fear of Cobbledicks, MacTavishes, and others of the same sort.  The vicar himself he did not mind so much—­the