“I am glad to hear he behaved better than I could have expected.  Did he say in what part of the preserves he had been?”

“He had been catching quails between the place where we saw him and the statues; he was to deliver three dozen to your son this afternoon for the Mayor’s banquet on Sunday.”

This was worse and worse.  She had urged her son to provide her with a supply of quails for Sunday’s banquet, but he had begged her not to insist on having them.  There was no close time for them in Erewhon, but he set his face against their being seen at table in spring and summer.  During the winter, when any great occasion arose, he had allowed a few brace to be provided.

“I asked my son to let me have some,” said Yram, who was now on full scent.  She laughed genially as she added, “Can you throw any light upon the question whether I am likely to get my three dozen?  I have had no news as yet.”

“The man had taken a good many; we saw them but did not count them.  He started about midnight for the ranger’s shelter, where he said he should sleep till daybreak, so as to make up his full tale betimes.”

Yram had heard her son complain that there were no shelters on the preserves, and state his intention of having some built before the winter.  Here too, then, the man’s story must be false.  She changed the conversation for the moment, but quietly told a servant to send high and low in search of her son, and if he could be found, to bid him come to her at once.  She then returned to her previous subject.

“And did not this heartless wretch, knowing how hungry you must both be, let you have a quail or two as an act of pardonable charity?”

“My dear Mayoress, how can you ask such a question?  We knew you would want all you could get; moreover, our permit threatened us with all sorts of horrors if we so much as ate a single quail.  I assure you we never even allowed a thought of eating one of them to cross our minds.”

“Then,” said Yram to herself, “they gorged upon them.”  What could she think?  A man who wore the old dress, and therefore who had almost certainly been in Erewhon, but had been many years away from it; who spoke the language well, but whose grammar was defective—­hence, again, one who had spent some time in Erewhon; who knew nothing of the afforesting law now long since enacted, for how else would he have dared to light a fire and be seen with quails in his possession; an adroit liar, who on gleaning information from the Professors had hazarded an excuse for immediately retracing his steps; a man, too, with blue eyes and light eyelashes.  What did it matter about his hair being dark and his complexion swarthy—­Higgs was far too clever to attempt a second visit to Erewhon without dyeing his hair and staining his face and hands.  And he had got their permit out of the Professors before he left them; clearly, then, he meant coming back, and coming back at once before the permit had expired.