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overhead, and just breeze enough to keep one cool; and I need scarcely observe that we did not allow the fact of a man having escaped from the convict establishment at the top of the hill to make any alteration in our plans.

The man, however, seemed to be running in Mr. Pethick's mind. There is not much to talk about at Two Bridges except the weather, and an escape from Princetown is undoubtedly an event.

"You are sure to meet him," our landlord remarked, as we set out. I will only hint that if I had only been as sure of this as our host professed to be, at least one of those pedestrians would have stayed at home. I am not at all sure that the stay-at-homes would not have extended to two. I am not a thief-catcher. I had no desire to earn five pounds by what Mr. Pethick had termed "giving the 'screws' the 'office.'" As for the members of the criminal classes, I have always felt that the less I have to do with them, the better I am pleased. I do not know how it is with other men. It has always been that way with me. And I am sure—on that point there cannot be the slightest possible doubt!—that if I had anticipated having an interview, in the remotest and most secluded fastnesses of wild Dartmoor, with a gentleman who would have been hung "if he had had his rights," I, for one, should have postponed that little excursion sine die. Indeed, I should not have minded if it had never come off at all. Ted Lane, however, gave me the impression that he was not of my way of thinking. I am persuaded that if you had listened to the remarks which he made as we went along—casual remarks, as it were—you would have supposed, as I supposed at the time, that nothing would have given him greater pleasure than to capture, or recapture, all the inmates of Princetown Prison single-handed. Nor do I deny that I might have dropped a hint, a distant hint, that under certain circumstances I should do, or endeavour to do, my duty to my Queen and to my country. But when Ted Lane declares, as he since has declared, that I said that I should be only too glad, five pounds or no five pounds, to have a chance of taking the blood-stained villain by the throat, and "scrunching the life right out of him!" he libels me. I hope and I believe, in fact I know, that I would "scrunch the life" out of no man, whether convict or, so to speak, layman.

"Casual remarks."

We had gone five miles, it may be; perhaps a little more, because we had passed For Tor. We were not talking about convicts—nothing of the kind. We were in the middle of a discussion about the Whistlerian theories of art, when I turned round, the better to get a light to my pipe. As I turned I saw, or thought I saw, someone or a hillock something drop down behind some two hundred yards away. But as I continued to look steadily in that direction and saw nothing and no one, I concluded that I was mistaken, and that some chance object had deceived my eye. Having lit my pipe, I rejoined Lane, who had gone on and was a few yards ahead.

We resumed the thread of our discussion; but as we argued I could not rid myself of the impression that, after all, I might not have been mistaken, and that someone had dropped down behind the hillock. To make quite sure, I glanced backwards, over my shoulder. As I did so I gave an exclamation.

"What's the matter?" inquired Ted.

I had stood still and turned. He also stood still and turned.