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delicate-looking chap about thirty years of age, dressed in a golf coat and grey trousers. “That’s a good weight. Not many pike that weight in the Fittel.” His words were like music to the pilot. “A chap at Uffington got one last year that weighed fifteen and a half pounds—that’s the biggest that there’s been in recent years.”
    “Have a beer,” said Marshall. And when he had provided it, he said: “You’ve lived here a long time, I suppose?”
    The other laughed. “Eighteen months,” he said. “I come from London. I’m in the motor trade—Great Portland Street. Now I’m in tractors. I run the service depot up the road. Now and again I flog a second-hand Morris, but it’s mostly tractors.”
    Marshall said: “A bit quiet after London?”
    “God, no. I love it down here.”
    “I should have thought it would have bored you stiff.”
    The man said: “Well, you might think so. But—what I mean is, up in London you arse around and go to the local and meet the boys and perhaps take in a flick, and then when you go to bed you find you’ve spent a quid and wonder where in hell it went and what you got for it. Down here there’s always something to do.”
    “What sort of thing?”
    “Well—shooting, for example. I know most of the farmers because I keep the tractors turning over for them, don’t you see? And any time I want to take a gun and shoot a rabbit or a pigeon, they like to have me do it round the farm, see? And it’s all in the day’s work, because you see the tractor at the same time and have a chat with the driver and show himhow to change the oil in the back axle, and then you go on and take a pot at a hare or anything that’s going, see? I got a hare last Thursday—no, Friday.”
    The pilot said: “Do you know the people out at Coldstone Mill?”
    “Up the river—where you caught the pike? It’s on Jack Barton’s land. I don’t know the people in the mill, but I know Jack Barton.”
    “Would he let me have a go at the pigeons in the trees below the mill?”
    “Sure he would. I sold him an eight-horse-power Ford last June.”
    “If you know him, would you like to ask him for me? Or give me a chit to him?”
    The man said: “Give me twopence for the call, and I’ll give him a tinkle in the morning.”
    “That’s awfully good of you.”
    “What’s your name?”
    “Marshall. What’s yours?”
    “Ellison. If I don’t see you to-morrow night, I’ll leave word with Nellie there, behind the bar.”
    They lit cigarettes. Eillison exhaled a long grey cloud. “There’s always something to do here. We had a fox shoot last month, all through the woods. They can’t keep them down, now that the hunt’s packed up.”
    “Are there many foxes here?”
    “The woods are stiff with them.” The tractor salesman leaned forward impressively. “I tell you, I could guarantee to take you and show you a fox and a badger both within a quarter of an hour.”
    The pilot, fifty miles from London, stared at him incredulously. “You couldn’t!”
    “I could.” Neither of them was drunk or anywhere near it, but their inhibitions were relaxed by beer. “I’d take you and show you a fox and a badger both within a quarter of an hour.”
    “Where?”
    “Never you mind.”
    “But wild?”
    “Sure—out in the woods. A wild fox and a wild badger, both within a quarter of an hour.”
    “Bet you couldn’t.”
    “Bet you ten bob I could. What about it?”
    “It’s a bet. What do we have to do?”
    “Let’s get this straight,” said Mr. Ellison. “If I show you a wild fox and a wild badger both within a quarter of an hour, you give me ten bob. And if I don’t, I give you ten bob.”
    “That’s right,” said Marshall. “What do we do?”
    “Christ,” said Mr. Ellison, “the missus won’t half tear me to bits. We meet in Hartley market-place, by the cross, at four o’clock in the morning.”
    “Christmas!” said the pilot. “All right. But it’s pitch dark till