‘Boys, attend!  Each of you take off his left boot.’

The boys stared incredulously.

‘Your left boots,’ repeated the master.  ’This gentleman is—­eh—­a chiropodist, and eh—­come, come!’ Joel Ham slashed the desk:  the boys hastened to remove their left boots, handed them to the stranger, and watched him curiously as he examined them at the desk.  The astonished scholars could see little, but the man in drab had two plaster casts before him and he was deliberately comparing the boys’ boots with these.  When he came to Dick’s boot he turned carelessly to the master and said: 

‘This is our man.’

‘Richard Haddon, the first boy on the back seat.’

The chiropodist did not look up.

‘Boy with red hair,’ he said.  ’Mixed up in that Cow Flat road affair.  Evidently an enterprising nipper, on the high road to the gallows.’

Joel Ham drew thumb and forefinger from the corners of his mouth to the point of his chin, and blinked his white lashes rapidly.

‘No,’ he said, quite emphatically; ’I don’t often give advice—­sensible people don’t need it, fools won’t take it—­but you might waste time by regarding that boy’s share in this business from a wrong point of view.  If he has had a hand in it—­and I have no doubt of it since his foot appears—­think of him at the worst as the accomplice of some scoundrel cunning enough to impose upon the folly of a romantic youngster stuffed with rubbishy fiction, and gifted with an extraordinarily adventurous spirit.’

This was perhaps the longest speech ever made by Joel Ham in ordinary conversation since he came to Waddy, and it quite exhausted him.  The stranger yawned pointedly.

‘Where does he live?’ he asked.

‘Third house down the road.  Mother a widow.’

’Right.  You might make an excuse to send him home presently.  You are a discreet man, Mr. Ham.’

’In everybody’s business but my own, Mr. Downy.

The stranger took up his parcel and marched out, and the boots having been restored to their owners work was resumed.  About twenty minutes later Dick was called out, and Joel presented him with an envelope.

‘Take that note to your mother, Ginger, will you?  Stay a moment,’ he said, as Dick turned away.  He took the boy by the coat and blinked at him complaisantly for a moment.

‘When in doubt, my boy, always tell the truth,’ he said.

Noting a puzzled expression in Dick’s face, he condescended to explain.

’When you’re asked many questions and want an answer, tell the truth.  Lies, my boy, are for fools and rogues—­remember, fools and rogues.’

Dick set his lips and nodded; and the master, after regarding him curiously for a moment, actually patted his head—­an uncommon exhibition of feeling on his part that caused the scholars to gape with wonderment.

When Dick reached his home he was astonished to find his mother seated in the front room with her handkerchief to her eyes, crying quite violently.  Opposite her sat the man in drab, swinging his hat between his knees and looking exactly as if he had just been awakened from a nap.  The man walked to the door, locked it, and then resumed his seat.