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able to tell us all the things a tourist should not miss, as they say in the guide-books. Do. It’s much more sensible than waiting about for somebody who may have gone to Timbuctoo or somewhere by mistake. I suppose your missing friend is of an age and character to look after himself?”
    â€œOh, quite,” murmured Felix with a faint smile. “Well, thanks awfully. I should like to very much. My name’s Felix Price.”
    â€œMine’s John Christmas. And here is my cousin, Sydenham Rampson. I vote we have dinner at once. If your friend hasn’t turned up by the time we’ve finished, we’ll take the car out and scour the countryside.”
    â€œIt’s awfully good of you. I do hope it won’t come to that.”
    â€œ He hopes it will,” said the newcomer confidentially, nodding towards his friend. “Anything for an unquiet life, is his motto. It comes of having no work to do and reading nothing but penny dreadfuls. ‘The Vanished Cyclist,’ or ‘A Mystery of the Welsh Marches.’ He just eats that sort of thing.”
    The fair, sturdy young man shook his head and sighed with an air of doleful pity, and they all proceeded into the large, dim, lamplit dining-room. But for two or three scattered diners at the small tables, they had the room to themselves, and took a comfortable table in a corner where they had a view of the window and the street.
    â€œYou mustn’t take any notice of Rampson’s libels,” said Christmas cheerfully, as they seated themselves. “He’s not human. He’s by way of being a scientist, and has no interest in anything he can see with the naked eye.”
    â€œThat,” said Mr. Rampson equably, “is untrue. I feel a very keen interest in this soup, which is at present perfectly visible without a microscope.”
    â€œWhen I use the word ‘interest,’ Sydenham, I refer to intellectual curiosity, not to mere animal instincts, such as greed. Would you believe it, this is the first holiday Rampson’s taken from his microscope for four years, and I had the greatest difficulty in disinterring him from his dingy lair in the Temple to bring him on it?”
    â€œI hope you like my native country, as much as you’ve seen of it?”
    â€œWales? We’ve only just slipped over the edge of it. We’ve been wandering through Worcester, Shropshire and Hereford. I should love to go right through to the Welsh coast, but Rampson is getting fidgety about his amoebas and says it’s time we started home.”
    â€œIt’s ten days since we left London,” murmured Mr. Rampson reproachfully. “And the idea was only to be away a week altogether.”
    â€œIt’s just ten days since we left London,” said Felix. “But we haven’t covered so much of the country as you have. We came by a more or less direct route, and took our time over it.”
    â€œYou live in London?”
    â€œYes. My native Radnorshire is only for holidays,” said Felix with a sigh and a smile. “I’m a photographer by profession and a painter in my spare time. Sometimes I combine photography and art, and bring out a book of photographs of Old English Cottages, or Country Occupations, or some such subject, with a little letter-press to explain the photos. I got rather a good photograph of the Tram Inn that’ll probably go in a book I’m doing on ‘Old Inns and Taverns.’”
    â€œYou’ve had jolly weather for your tour.”
    â€œRather. We’re all sorry it’s over. It was young Lion’s idea. He’s just been given a new super-bicycle, and naturally despises any other method of getting about.”
    â€œLion? Is that the young windmill who stopped us on Rodland Hill?”
    â€œYes. Lion Browning. He’s at school near London, you see, and has been staying the first part of his holidays with Nora and some cousins in Sussex. Nora