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can take a look at the Veault at the same time, Missie. It stands on the same bank, not above a quarter mile from Llanhalo, and that’s six miles from Hastry, pretty near.”
    â€œI wonder whether I can hire a bicycle,” said Kate, who had foolishly not anticipated these distances, nor a bus service that ran only twice a week.
    Mrs. Howells said that she thought her daughter, who lived in the village, would be pleased to lend hers, as now that she had a baby to push about she didn’t use a bicycle any more.
    â€œYou needs a bike to get about in this country,” she agreed.
    â€œSidney was for ever running around on his bike, poor boy. He was a real country kind of boy, not like some of them that’s evacuated here and can’t find anything to do with themselves. He was a real nice boy, and I can’t bear to think what has happened to him! Our children is all grown up and married, it was like being young again to have him in the house!”
    Tears sparkled in her kind eyes, and Mr. Howells, looking very grave said: “Ah, that was so, indeed!”
    A little later, after a perilous walk down the garden path in the black-out and the rain, Kate was shown up the box-stairs to her bedroom. 
    As Mrs. Howells put the candle down on the chest-of-drawers and made sure the window-curtain over the little window was fast, Kate looked about her. This had been Sidney Brentwood’s room. His little collection of books was still on the mantelpiece. His football boots were still under the washstand. A photograph of his father in a frame of Woolworth tortoise-shell stood on the pillar-like commode behind the big, puffed bed.
    â€œExcuse me, I never can come in this room without feeling bad,” said Mrs. Howells, plumping down Kate’s knapsack, which she had insisted on carrying as well as the candle, and wiping her eyes on the back of her broad hand. “I cannot bear to think what has happened to that poor boy!”
    Kate patted her shoulder and made consoling noises, adding, for it was her business to investigate every possibility as quickly as possible:
    â€œWhat do you think has happened to him, Mrs. Howells?”
    Mrs. Howells could not, or would not, say. She could, and would, say what had not happened to him, however.
    â€œThe police thinks as he went back to London,” she said with some indignation. “They thinks that if a boy’s home is in London, that will be sure to be where he’s gone, too! But me and Corney knows as Sidney would never have wanted to go back to London! He was always saying that even when the war was over, he would never want to go back! We used to be surprised that he did not care more for his home and relations, but when we had the letter from his aunt after he went away, then we was not so surprised!”
    Kate nodded. She was looking thoughtfully at the little row of books on the mantelpiece. “The Boy’s Own Annual,” an ancient bound volume of “Children’s Encyclopaedia,” “Wild Life in Streams and Ditches,” and a book called “Things For a Boy to Do,” shared the space with a collection of well-battered schoolbooks. She picked up the latter volume, which had the yellow label of the County libraries, and ran her eye through it.
    â€œHad Sidney any special hobbies? I suppose he didn’t say why he took this book out of the library?”
    Mrs. Howells smiled sadly.
    â€œSidney was a boy that was always wanting to do things,” she sighed, and nervously rubbing her hands over the big knob at the bed-foot, she said hurriedly, as if she could hardly bear to utter the words, but had better get them out: “I am afraid he is dead, or he would have come back.”
    â€œBut to have disappeared so completely, Mrs. Howells, bicycle and all!” 
    â€œI knows, but—the bracken is very high on the hills at this time of year, and the hills is very wild,” said Mrs. Howells in