"Yes, sir, we all had more than was good for us, and we went to the
Radical meeting and made an awful row, and got chucked out and——"
"Look here, Grantly, what has all this to do with young Gallup? It was idiotic of you to go to his meeting, and the conduct of a vulgar blockhead to get drunk; but in what way . . ."
"That's not all, sir; after the meeting the bands came into collision, and I got taken up."
"You got taken up?"
"Two policemen, sir, taking me to the station, and Mr Gallup got me out of it and gave me a bed in his house."
Mr Ffolliot sat forward in his chair. "You accepted his hospitality—you slept the night in his house?"
"If I hadn't I'd have slept the night in the lock-up, and it would have been in the papers."
"But why—why should he have intervened to protect you?"
"Do you think, sir"—Grantly's voice was very shy—"that it might be because we both come from the same place?"
"He doesn't belong to the village."