An early swift screeched and swept above her.  A great white owl swooped out of the wood and waved away up the hillside, hovering over the gorse.  Under the hedge a scattered troop of children were coming down the slope along the path that led past the little old church among the sycamores.

Boy led the mare up the hillside, her eyes on the flowing green of the hill.  The young man followed in her wake, lazy almost as the old mare, who trailed reluctantly behind with clicking shoes.  The dreams seemed to have possessed him, too.  He did not speak; his eyes were downward; but he was aware all the time of that slight, slow-moving figure walking just in front of him.

Then something seemed to disturb the stillness and ruffle his brooding mind.  It was a vague disease as of a coming sickness, and little more.  He emerged from the land of quiet and looked about him, like a stag disturbed by a stalker while grazing.

A man was blundering down the hillside toward them, an easel on his shoulder.

As he came closer his face seemed strangely familiar to the young man.  Where had he seen it?  Then he recollected in a flash.  It was the face Albert had drawn in caricature on the stable-door—­the face of Ally Sloper.

Silver found himself wondering whether the owner of the face was aware of his likeness, crude indeed though real, of his great protagonist.

The fellow was incredibly slovenly.  His hair was reddish and bushy about the jaw, and but for his eyes you might have mistaken him for a commonplace tramp.  Those eyes held you.  They were sensitive, suffering, terrible with the terror of a baffled spirit seeking escape and finding none.  In that coarse and bloated face they seemed pitifully out of place and crying continually to be released.  Indeed, there was something volcanic about the man, as of lava on the boil and ready at any moment to pour forth in destructive torrents.  And surely there had been eruptions in the past with fatal consequences.

Now he waddled toward them with an unsavoury grin.

“What luck?” he called, in a somewhat honied voice.

“We won,” replied Boy briefly.

She slipped the halter over the head of the old mare, who, too lazy to remove herself, began to graze where she stood.

The artist stood above the girl, showing his broken and dirty teeth, his eyes devouring her.

Silver resented the familiarity of his gaze.

“Mr. Silver, this is Mr. Joses,” said the girl.

The difference between the two men amused her:  the one clean, keen, beautifully appointed, like a horse got up for a show, the other shaggy and sloppy as a farmyard beast.

“Very pleased to make your acquaintance, sir, I’m sure,” grinned the artist, bowing elaborately.

The other responded coldly.

Joses had not made a favourable impression on the young man.  Boy saw that at once; and it was not difficult to see.  For Silver showed his likes and dislikes much as Billy Bluff did.