nd a light broke over his face. "By Jove!" he says,
"you're right. I did put it down for a moment on the platform at Banbury
while I bought a 'Tit-Bits.'"

"There you are," I says; "now you're talking sense. And wait a minute;
isn't to-morrow the first day of the Birmingham Dog Show?"

"I believe you're right," he says.

"Now we're getting warm," I says. "By a coincidence this dog was being
taken to Birmingham, packed in a hamper exactly similar to the one you
put your baby in. You've got this man's bull-pup, he's got your baby;
and I wouldn't like to say off-hand at this moment which of you's feeling
the madder. As likely as not, he thinks you've done it on purpose."

He leant his head against the bed-post and groaned. "Milly may be here
at any moment," says he, "and I'll have to tell her the baby's been sent
by mistake to a Dog Show! I daresn't do it," he says, "I daresn't do
it."

"Go on to Birmingham," I says, "and try and find it. You can catch the
quarter to six and be back here before eight."

"Come with me," he says; "you're a good man, come with me. I ain't fit
to go by myself."

He was right; he'd have got run over outside the door, the state he was
in then.

"Well," I says, "if the guv'nor don't object--"

"Oh! he won't, he can't," cries the young fellow, wringing his hands.
"Tell him it's a matter of a life's happiness. Tell him--"

"I'll tell him it's a matter of half sovereign extra on to the bill," I
says. "That'll more likely do the trick."

And so it did, with the result that in another twenty minutes me and
young Milberry and the bull-pup in its hamper were in a third-class
carriage on our way to Birmingham. Then the difficulties of the chase
began to occur to me. Suppose by luck I was right; suppose the pup was
booked for the Birmingham Dog Show; and suppose by a bit more luck a gent
with a hamper answering description had been noticed getting out of the
5.13 train; then where were we? We might have to interview every cabman
in the town. As likely as not, by the time we did find the kid, it
wouldn't be worth the trouble of unpacking. Still, it wasn't my cue to
blab my thoughts. The father, poor fellow, was feeling, I take it, just
about as bad as he wanted to feel. My business was to put hope into him;
so when he asked me for about the twentieth time if I thought as he would
ever see his child alive again, I snapped him up shortish.

"Don't you fret yourself about that