a matter of fact we want to get over to Swansea, and we hoped you would take us with you." also more We thought than said. And now a little embarrassment on both sides and the mud of doubt stirred. With more points cleared up, the captain was not entirely sure that under the circumstances he quite saw his way, &c., &c. Says Kay to himself, "Bother that darned fool Vale; why doesn't he come along? Between us we'd have the matter settled at once." At the same time the undoubted possibility that he might at any moment be cut off from the land presented itself. So aloud he temporises. "I'll just find my friend," he declares, and turns to go. Then for the first time it is observed that the mysterious visitor wears on his back a large and bulky pack, such as pedlars and, for all the captain knows, anarchists carry. With a brief and, temporising still, non-committal farewell, Kay steps out on to the deck, and there he is confronted by an officer of the law, who asks him politely but firmly to "step up to the station." We wonder what the subsequent reflections of the captain of the Quantock Range have been on this incident. Having joined forces once more we all marched off for the station, our late friendly confederates at the gates staring at us with a kind of horror VOL. CCXVI.-NO. MCOOV. 66 Ah!"returned Hunter ruefully, "that's the worst of it!" I was fortunate in having been arrested by Hunter, for he was the best type of policeman. With a formidable glare, which he put on like a mask when occasion demanded and put off immediately the moment had passed, he was at heart an irrepressible boy. If he had not the sense of humour such as would tickle the palate of an intellectual, he had at any rate a rare sense of mirth, which was held in suppression only so long as his uniform reminded him of its proper place in the bosom of a constable. We paused outside the door of the police-station while the second policeman fumbled for the key. A dimburning gas-jet shone through the narrow fanlight over the door with a sort of settled grimness well calculated to quell sinking hearts that waited on this threshold, which might usher them for ever from freedom and even sweet life itself. Hunter turned encouragingly to his charges, and in a voice tinged with the burlesque enun ciation of the best-approved comedian, said— 66 The Abode of Love! The ever-open door!" Having duly entered and turned up the gas, Hunter knocked on the ceiling, which signal was briefly answered with a single eloquent rap. I strolled across the room and took a chair, which gave an ominous creak and lurch as I sat upon it. The second policeman hastened to me with another chair. "We don't want to break your neck!" said he apologetically. "On the contrary," said I, the sinister ambiguity of his phrase flashing across me, I think that is the very thing that you do want to do." Presently the Inspector entered, clothed over his night attire with his official shell. There was a confidential muttering, and then he turned his eyes on me. I saw at once that he was convinced that I was X. He then sat him down in the seat of judgment and requested me to stop smoking, after which the examination concerning my identity began. The documentary proofs of this were rather of a flimsy nature. There was a Post Office Savings Bank book, showing a balance not intended for the eyes of outsiders; there was a letter from my banker to my solicitor, urging him to urge me for the repayment of an overdraft; and finally, there was a letter from a young lady, who signed herself mysteriously "The Golden Bee." There was also the receipted bill of a hotel, my name on a piece of clothing, and a ticket admitting "one" to Stonehenge. There was nothing more. And now came questions as to where I had come from. The addresses on both letters and in the bank-book were all different. What was my permanent address? I had none ! My way was traced backwards to Portishead (wandering without authority on the railwayline and the docks), on to the bus, on to the road from Bristol, on the docks again there. At Bristol I was discovered to have been in possession of a bicycle, to which my name was not attached. Where was that bicycle? It was temporarily abandoned. What, in any case, was I doing in Bristol with a bicycle if I was on a walking tour ? This bicycle, it was presently revealed, had carried me from London along an altogether unlikely and ridiculous route. To London it had carried me from the the Eastern counties, where I had arrived on it from a shire in the west of England, having cycled there from Manchester, where I had abandoned a red setter dog, in whose company I had entered that city; the trio of us having, to begin with, originated our disjointed and quite incredible excursion from some place in Wales the Inspector neither attempted to pronounce, nor, I think, believed to exist. It is really amazing how irrational one's programme of life appears when once one falls under suspicion. A pause, during which much eye-scrutiny paraphrase. Fruit boats! What lines, for instance? Was he known on vessels of the Mount Line-the Mount Elvira, perhaps? Yes, certainly; one Brodie was the refrigerator engineer. "The Mount Elvira," said the Inspector impressively, "is here! "Send for Brodie!" cried Kay, starting up. and chin-rubbing. Then P.C. Hunter suddenly claps on his thunder-mask and complicates the situation by venturing to ask me what I was doing in Manchester. I was there to see a goddaughter. Ah! a blunder! Had I not said that my goddaughter was located at Moulton in Cheshire That was another goddaughter. Likely tale ! And then was there not some idle talk about my now being on my way to Wales to see some goddaughter ? No; not a daughter this time, but a mother-a fairy godmother, in fact. What was I? Well, that was a hard question, too. I opined that I was a writer. "What do you write? said Whoever we were, and whatever Inspector Bruce. That again was a delicate question. Indeed exactly what I wrote I did not know myself. But I thought the snag might be negotiated by trotting out my most respectable literary alliance, so I said, with evasive modesty, "Sometimes I write for Blackwood's Magazine.' "Blackbird's Magazine'!" muttered the Inspector. could see that this made a very doubtful impression. One "I will," said the Inspector, in a way from which one inferred that he was not the kind of fowl that one catches with bluff. Time wore on. It was two hours after midnight. Then came a turn in the tide of the official attitude towards us. crimes we might have committed, and whatever lies we might be telling, they liked the oddity of us, and the Inspector himself went off to brew us some tea. Presently he brought it in, served in his own best crockery, and having partaken of it, we sat round the fire and talked agreeably. Hunter sat at the table and wrote up office-books, while his chief joined the fireside tête-à-tête. Thus the InThen came Kay's turn. He spector was almost one of was also deficient of corro- us," although never quite so. borative literature. It appeared It was plain that under his that he devoted his life to tunic he wore the uniform of mysterious practices in the repose, but he never so far holds of fruit boats that could allowed his official integrity to only be explained in the jargon sink to the extent of doffing of an obscure technology, which his cap; and though he laughed sounded to lay ears highly and talked freely, he would pop specious in the inventor's pro- a question every now and fessional phrase and awkwardly then that perhaps might catch suspicious in his attempted us unawares. Another hour of this sort of thing, and then we talked ourselves to a standstill, and there was no sound but the clock and the indefatigable pen of Hunter. "WANTED FOR MURDER,' ran the notices round the wall in black ugly type. Three out of four men in this room believed me to be X. What if I were he? Instantly everything was changed. I felt the pitiless smirch of those words, the dull negative torture of the present moment, the apathetic hostility of trivial inanimate things-cracks in the ceiling-plaster, the scratching of a steel pen, the faint flat smell peculiar to prison cells, inseparable even from those attached to the station. It seemed to have come suddenly into the power of these things to batten on the spirit, to curdle the cream of imagination. A beginning of strangulations! About half-past six there was a slight commotion; the door was flung open, and a policeman marched in, followed by a little man, squarely built, dressed in the uniform of a marine engineer. His face was exceedingly expressive. Behind his glasses looked out a pair of round eyes, at once quizzing, alert, and calm, not unfrequently seen in those who spend their lives in watching the eternal rolling of the sea and the eternal revolutions of marine engines. A certain smile he had with him, too, before which the atmosphere of suspicion under which we were all assembled flew asunder like a broken web. "Brodie!" cried Kay, springing up. "Why, it's Mr Kay!" exclaimed the new-comer in great surprise, not, however, removing his hands from his jacket pockets. cr "I say!" said Kay, “I am sorry they got you out of bed so early." "Ye're airly up yersel"," turning his head slowly, so as to quiz and smile at all of us in turn. "You recognise him, then?" said the Inspector. "Recognise !" said Brodie, still in the dark as to why he had been summoned to this doubtful tryst, but conceiving Kay to be in some unusual strait, and wishing to do him the best service possible. He paused to consider, but, perceiving that the Inspector was hanging on his words, he burst out suddenly, "Why, this is the mon that did the valves! " After this there was a pause, while Brodie again surveyed us each in turn. Then he said to Kay, "Am I to bail ye oot ? " Kay assured him in the negative, and he was a little puzzled. Collision with the police in seaport towns arose, in his experience, from causes few and simple. He turned to Hunter. What's he been doing?" said he. "Has he been getting into trouble with the girruls ? No; it was not that. Well, then, it must be money, and Brodie was not to be put off by denials through any delicacy. He was pre pared to stake his last farthing on Kay. He went away quite sad that a mere recognition was all that he was called upon to perform. At last came the daylight, and with it another Inspector from the Criminal Investigation Department, armed with the authority of the head office at Bristol. While the two chiefs were in conference, the rest of us adjourned to a kind of gymnasium. Here the blithe spirits of P.C. Hunter could contain themselves no longer. He tossed a hat in the air, and kicking it with wonderful effect scored a goal on Kay's face, so that his pipe went flying. Kay and I attempted some gymnastics, with no very brilliant results, and Hunter, having watched us indulgently for a little while, unexpectedly turned a series of excellent somersaults on the floor. We tasted again of the hospitality of Inspector Bruce, but it was not until after midday, when our identities had been further established and our credentials guaranteed by exchange of wires between Bristol and the Curate of So-and-so, that we were free once more. P.C. Hunter, who had gone off duty some time earlier, had now become our inseparable ally. Instead of going to repose after his long vigil he must needs come back to the station in plain clothes, and there wait doggedly until we were let go, and then escort us back to the docks from whence he had imported us. In the street the children of Avonmouth were all trooping back to school, amongst which, with square rosy face and a mass of fair yellow hair, was little Thora, the darling of our erstwhile captor. What she had been told about us I do not know, but it cannot have been too evil a report that had reached her, for she stood on the pavement and waved us out of sight. And now we were come on to the docks again like Paul and Silas, with the forces of the law not only on our side, but anxious for our speedy departure. A word from our P.C. to the skipper of a barge, that with her tug had just towed from the basin into the long lock, and we were invited on board forthwith. The water fell below us to the tidelevel; the dock-gates opened, and Avonmouth was translated immediately from a very material reality to a recollection, foremost of which stood out not the words Wanted for Murder," but the roguish eyes, the red cheeks, and yellow hair of little Thora. The good ship Carey was a steel hulk, with a carrying capacity of 600 tons. In a manner of speaking, she could boast both a head of steam and a ketch-rig, though the powers of the former were confined to the driving of a winch, and the sail-cloth of the latter was used rather for steadying the vessel in rolling than for propelling her. A captain there was, and a crew of five, yet their functions lay not in the |