"Got him all safe. Will report further this evening."
And ten minutes later the two were ensconced in a third-class carriage, with tickets for Shalecray.
Geoff had often travelled second, but rarely third. He did not, truth to tell, particularly like it. Yet he could not have proposed anything else to his companion, unless he had undertaken to pay the difference. And as it was, the breakfast and his own third-class ticket had made a considerable hole in his thirty shillings. He must be careful, for even with all his inexperience he knew it was possible he might have to pay his own way for some little time to come.
"Still, the chances are I shall find what I want very easily," he reflected. "It is evidently not difficult, by what this fellow tells me."
It did not even strike him as in any way a very remarkable coincidence that almost on the doorstep of his own home he should have lighted upon the very person he needed to give him the particular information he was in want of. For in many ways, in spite of his boasted independence, poor Geoff was as innocent and unsuspicious as a baby.
CHAPTER VIII.
"HALF-A-CROWN A WEEK AND HIS VICTUALS."
