“That’s Bobbie!” said Stirling, rising slowly from his chair. “He won’t refuse whisky, even if you do.  I’d better get another bottle.”

The tap was repeated peevishly.

“I’m coming, laddie!” Stirling protested.

He slippered out through the hall and through the surgery to the side door, I following, and Titus sneezing and snuffing in the rear.

“I say, mester,” said a heavy voice as the doctor opened the door.  It was not Brindley, but Jos Myatt.  Unable to locate the bell-push in the dark, he had characteristically attacked the sole illuminated window.  He demanded, or he commanded, very curtly, that the doctor should go up instantly to the Foaming Quart at Toft End.

Stirling hesitated a moment.

“All right, my man,” said he, calmly.

“Now?” the heavy, suspicious voice on the doorstep insisted.

“I’ll be there before ye if ye don’t sprint, man.  I’ll run up in the car.”  Stirling shut the door.  I heard footsteps on the gravel path outside.

“Ye heard?” said he to me.  “And what am I to do with ye?”

“I’ll go with you, of course,” I answered.

“I may be kept up there a while.”

“I don’t care,” I said roisterously.  “It’s a pub and I’m a traveller.”

Stirling’s household was in bed and his assistant gone home.  While he and Titus got out the car I wrote a line for the Brindleys:  “Gone with doctor to see patient at Toft End.  Don’t wait up.—­A.L.”  This we pushed under Brindley’s front door on our way forth.  Very soon we were vibrating up a steep street on the first speed of the car, and the yellow reflections of distant furnaces began to shine over house roofs below us.  It was exhilaratingly cold, a clear and frosty night, tonic, bracing after the enclosed warmth of the study.  I was joyous, but silently.  We had quitted the kingdom of the god Pan; we were in Lucina’s realm, its consequence, where there is no laughter.  We were on a mission.

“I didn’t expect this,” said Stirling.

“No?” I said.  “But seeing that he fetched you this morning—­”

“Oh!  That was only in order to be sure, for himself.  His sister was there, in charge.  Seemed very capable.  Knew all about everything.  Until ye get to the high social status of a clerk or a draper’s assistant people seem to manage to have their children without professional assistance.”

“Then do you think there’s anything wrong?” I asked.

“I’d not be surprised.”

He changed to the second speed as the car topped the first bluff.  We said no more.  The night and the mission solemnized us.  And gradually, as we rose towards the purple skies, the Five Towns wrote themselves out in fire on the irregular plain below.

“That’s Hanbridge Town Hall,” said Stirling, pointing to the right.  “And that’s Bursley Town Hall,” he said, pointing to the left.  And there were many other beacons, dominating the jewelled street-lines that faded on the horizon into golden-tinted smoke.