Page:Buchan - The Thirty-Nine Steps (Grosset Dunlap, 1915).djvu/171

 the speeches at the hall. At that he laughed uproariously.

"Harry talked dashed nonsense, did he? I quite believe it. He's as good a chap as ever breathed, but his idiot of an uncle has stuffed his head with maggots. Go on, Mr. Hannay." My day as roadman excited him a bit. He made me describe the two fellows in the car very closely, and seemed to be raking back in his memory. He grew merry again when he heard of the fate of that ass, Jopley.

But the old man in the moorland house solemnised him. Again I had to describe every detail of his appearance.

"Bland and bald-headed and hooded his eyes like a bird. . . . He sounds a sinister wild fowl! And you dynamited his hermitage, after he had saved you from the police? Spirited piece of work, that!"

Presently I reached the end of my wanderings. He got up slowly and looked down at me from the hearth-rug.

"You may dismiss the police from your