‘Now I wonder how that got left there?’ Hood mused.  ’There’s been rare searching for that, I’ll be bound.  Here’s something to put our friend into a better temper.’

He turned the note over once or twice, tried in vain to decipher a scribbled endorsement, then restored it to the envelope.  With the letter in his hand, he went to the office.

‘Mr. Dagworthy out?’ he asked of his fellow-clerk on looking round.

The clerk was a facetious youth.  He rose from his seat, seized a ruler, and began a species of sword-play about Hood’s head, keeping up a grotesque dance the while.  Hood bore it with his wonted patience, smiling faintly.

‘Mr. Dagworthy out?’ he repeated, as soon as he was free from apprehension of a chance crack on the crown.

’He is, my boy.  And what’s more, there’s a chance of your having a spree in Hebsworth.  Go down on your knees and pray that no telegram from Foot Brothers—­I mean, Legge—­arrives during the next five-and-twenty minutes.’

‘Why?’

’If not, you’re to takee this notee to Brother Andrew Leggee,—­comprenez?  The boss was going to send me, but he altered his mind, worse luck.’

‘Twelve-thirteen?’ asked Hood.

’Yes.  And now if you’re in the mind, I’ll box you for half a dollar—­what say?’

He squared himself in pugilistic attitude, and found amusement in delivering terrific blows which just stopped short of Hood’s prominent features.  The latter beat a retreat.

Twelve o’clock struck, and no telegram had arrived; neither had Dagworthy returned to the mill.  Hood was indisposed to leave the envelope to be given by other hands; he might as well have the advantage of such pleasure as the discovery would no doubt excite.  So he put it safely in his pocket-book, and hastened to catch the train, taking with him the paper of sandwiches which represented his dinner.  These he would eat on the way to Hebsworth.

It was a journey of ten miles, lying at first over green fields, with a colliery vomiting blackness here and there, then through a region of blight and squalor, finally over acres of smoke-fouled streets, amid the roar of machinery; a journey that would have crushed the heart in one fresh from the breath of heaven on sunny pastures.  It was a slow train, and there were half a dozen stoppages.  Hood began to eat his sandwiches at a point where the train was delayed for a few minutes by an adverse signal; a coal-pit was close by, and the smoke from the chimney blew in at the carriage windows, giving a special flavour to the bread and meat.  There was a drunken soldier in the same compartment, who was being baited by a couple of cattle-drovers with racy vernacular not to be rendered by the pen.  Hood munched his smoky sandwich, and with his sad eyes watched the great wheel of the colliery revolve, and the trucks rise and descend.  The train moved on again.  The banter between the other three passengers was taking an angry turn; to escape the foul language as far as possible, Hood kept his head at the window.  Of a sudden the drunken soldier was pushed against him, and before he could raise his hands, his hat had flown off on the breeze.