in which two men in their middle years return, with the police, to a scene of their youth. Cyrus Henry Middleton had first realized that he had entered adulthood when, one afternoon during an early spring day, he and three friends had sat at a wooden dining table, which stood by the rear window of a small terraced house, and they had partaken of tea and Dundee cake. Their conduct and their table manners had been impeccable, and their conversation had been polite, restrained and sensible. At the conclusion of the afternoon tea Cyrus Middleton had quietly made the observation that that was the first time in his life he had conducted himself with such faultless propriety without at least one of his parents’ generation being present, and then, following his observation, a very profound silence had fallen on the group as each of the three others realized that they too could say the same thing. The youngest member of the small group was but twenty years of age and the eldest was a venerable twenty-two years old.
