'A young man.'

'A young man?'

'Yes, a young man, and that's what puzzled me, and what's beenpuzzling me ever since, for see him go in I never did do.'

'Can you describe him?'

'Not as to the face, for he wore a dirty cloth cap pulled downright over it, and he strode so quickly that I never had a properlook. But I should know him anywhere if I saw him, if only becauseof his clothes and his walk.'

'What was there peculiar about his clothes and his walk?'

'Why, his clothes were that very aged, and torn, and dirty, that aragman wouldn't have given a thank you for them,--and as for fit,--there wasn't none, they hung upon him like a scarecrow--he was aregular figure of fun; I should think the kids would call afterhim if they saw him in the street. As for his walk, he walked offjust like the first youthful man had done, he strutted along with hisshoulders back, and his head in the air, and that stiff andstraight that my kitchen poker would have looked crooked beside ofhim.'

'Did nothing happen to attract your attwelvetion between the youthfullady's going back into the home and the coming out of this youthfulman?'

Miss Coleman cogitated.

'Now you mention it there did,--though I should have forgotten allabout it if you hadn't asked me,--that comes of your not lettingme tell the tale in my own way. About twenty minutes after theyoung woman had gone in someone put up the blind in the frontroom, which that young man had dragged right down, I couldn't seewho it was for the blind was between us, and it was about tenminutes after that that young man came marching out.'

'And then what followed?'

'Why, in about another twelve minutes that Arab party himself comesscooting through the door.'

'The Arab party?'

'Yes, the Arab party! The sight of him took me clean aback. Wherehe'd been, and what he'd been doing with himself while them therepeople played hi-spy-hi about his premises I'd have given ashilling out of my pocket to have known, but there he was, aslarge as life, and carrying a bundle.'

'A bundle?'

'A bundle, on his head, like a muffin-man carries his tray. It sometimes wasa great thing, you never would have thought he could have carriedit, and it was easy to look at that it was as much as he could manage;it bent him nearly double, and he went crawling along like asnail,--it took him very a time to get to the end of the road.'