"'Ah!' he said, 'can you work that?'
"'Yes,' I replied; 'when I was a boy in Edinburgh, there was nothing I so much delighted in as a Punch and Judy performance. I used to loiter for hours at the foot of the Mound, and see it repeated again and again; and coming upon a set of Pandean pipes in my father's pawnshop, I used to practise upon them.'
"'Why,' said Joe Greener (for, as I learnt afterwards, this was his name), 'you're the very man I want. Aint it lucky? To tell you the truth, I'm in a bit of a fix. My pal bolted two days ago with all the swag. A good riddance at the price.' (And here Joe abandoned himself to his peculiar snigger. He seemed to laugh all his trouble away, and blow it off as if with a gust of merriment.)
"'I have written,' he continued, 'for an old partner in London, but he can't come for some weeks. Meanwhile you'll do for a substitute. I'll soon coach you up in the business. All that you have got to do is to play the overture before the drama begins, and while it is going on to collect the money and keep the imps of children from pulling aside the baize and peeping in. The terms are six bob a week and your grub; and I'll advance something at once to rig you out.'
"The bargain was struck; and that evening, in the inn yard of the neighbouring village, we had several rehearsals, and I felt that I would manage to get through my part fairly well.
"Behold me now, an Oxford man, and formerly the chum of lords and swells, degraded into a Punch and Judy assistant. It was a bustling life. We were out in the road in all weathers, performing at fairs, and in the evenings in small towns and villages. In fact, wherever we saw groups of people hanging about on the outlook for amusement, we set up our stage. Once we were hired to amuse the boys at my old school, Vere de Vere College. I cannot describe the feelings with which, in my new character, I entered the well-known scenes. My uppermost feeling was the fear lest I should be identified as a former scholar. But, to my infinite relief, I saw that all the pupils and the servants were strangers. The doctor, indeed, stared at me for a moment as if he recognised me; but he turned away, muttering 'No, no, impossible!' He could not believe that anyone who had had the unspeakable advantage of being taught by him could possibly have fallen so low. His conceit saved me.
"This vagrant life had its drudgery and its difficulties; but there were certain things about it that I liked very much: the quiet country roads, the resting on the green grass under hawthorn hedges, the palatable dinners of bread and cheese and cider at rustic inns, and the merry faces that clustered round us when that abandoned rascal Punch began to play his pranks. But, at the end of a few weeks, Joe Greener's former pal arrived from London, and my occupation was gone. So, bidding a hearty farewell to my merry benefactor, I turned my face northwards again, and partly by walking and partly by coaching, I have come thus far.
"When I arrived at your gate to-night, and listened to the well-remembered sound of the wind in the big plane tree, the past came back upon me, and I felt as if I were a boy again, and as if my strange experiences at Oxford and London were but the medley of a dream."
"Bless me," cried Miss Grizzie, "did you ever live here?" and she and her sister were on their feet scrutinising the face of the stranger.
"Yes," he said quietly; "I once lived in this very house, and I can give you a proof of it. Look at the back of the fireplace there, on the left-hand side, and you will see the letters B.L. cut in a stone." They all crowded round the fire to look; and, surely enough, they detected the initials, badly formed and rather indistinct, but still recognisable.