On a step of the stile leading to the short-cut to Rendon young Crossjay was espied.  A man-tramp sat on the top-bar.

“There you are; what are you doing there?  Where’s Miss Middleton?” said Vernon.  “Now, take care before you open your mouth.”

Crossjay shut the mouth he had opened.

“The lady has gone away over to a station, sir,” said the tramp.

“You fool!” roared Crossjay, ready to fly at him.

“But ain’t it now, young gentleman?  Can you say it ain’t?”

“I gave you a shilling, you ass!”

“You give me that sum, young gentleman, to stop here and take care of you, and here I stopped.”

“Mr. Whitford!” Crossjay appealed to his master, and broke of in disgust.  “Take care of me!  As if anybody who knows me would think I wanted taking care of!  Why, what a beast you must be, you fellow!”

“Just as you like, young gentleman.  I chaunted you all I know, to keep up your downcast spirits.  You did want comforting.  You wanted it rarely.  You cried like an infant.”

“I let you ‘chaunt’, as you call it, to keep you from swearing.”

“And why did I swear, young gentleman? because I’ve got an itchy coat in the wet, and no shirt for a lining.  And no breakfast to give me a stomach for this kind of weather.  That’s what I’ve come to in this world!  I’m a walking moral.  No wonder I swears, when I don’t strike up a chaunt.”

“But why are you sitting here wet through, Crossjay!  Be off home at once, and change, and get ready for me.”

“Mr. Whitford, I promised, and I tossed this fellow a shilling not to go bothering Miss Middleton.”

“The lady wouldn’t have none o” the young gentleman, sir, and I offered to go pioneer for her to the station, behind her, at a respectful distance.”

“As if!—­you treacherous cur!” Crossjay ground his teeth at the betrayer.  “Well, Mr. Whitford, and I didn’t trust him, and I stuck to him, or he’d have been after her whining about his coat and stomach, and talking of his being a moral.  He repeats that to everybody.”

“She has gone to the station?” said Vernon.

Not a word on that subject was to be won from Crossjay.

“How long since?” Vernon partly addressed Mr. Tramp.

The latter became seized with shivers as he supplied the information that it might be a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes.  “But what’s time to me, sir?  If I had reglar meals, I should carry a clock in my inside.  I got the rheumatics instead.”

“Way there!” Vernon cried, and took the stile at a vault.

“That’s what gentlemen can do, who sleeps in their beds warm,” moaned the tramp.  “They’ve no joints.”

Vernon handed him a half-crown piece, for he had been of use for once.

“Mr. Whitford, let me come.  If you tell me to come I may.  Do let me come,” Crossjay begged with great entreaty.  “I sha’n’t see her for . . .”