Jobby could remember no further, save that, on waking, he found himself in a wretched, damp, dirty room, lying on the sacking of a bare bedstead, and on looking for his clothes, he discovered that they had been stolen, and the ragged ones he now wore left in their place. He was too frightened to recollect how he had got away from the house, or found his way out of the courts. All he knew was, that on reaching the open street, he had placed himself under the protection of the first policeman he could meet, who returned with the boy to see if he could find out the house again, but in vain. The many windings and turnings of the courts so confused the country lad, that it was impossible for him to recall the way he had gone. After this, the policeman had taken him to the station, where the superintendent had given orders to one of the men to accompany him home. * * * * * Mrs. Sandboys was too glad to have her darling boy with her once again to feel inclined either to grieve or scold overmuch about his adventures; besides, she now knew the luggage would arrive in a few hours, and then he and the rest of the family could be made clean and sweet, which, she began to think, they were far from being at that present moment. Mr. Sandboys, too, was not so much annoyed at the occurrence as might have been expected. Not only was he delighted at the boy’s return, but he felt a kind of inward satisfaction to find that his long-cherished theory as to the wickedness of the great Metropolis was being, in all its particulars, so fully borne out. He had foreseen, he said, every occurrence that had happened, but they had only themselves to blame. He had fully warned them of all they had to undergo; and, in his opinion—if he knew anything at all about the rogueries of London—they had not yet gone through one tithe of the troubles that were in store for them. Cursty’s sermonizing was at last cut short by the arrival of the long looked-for luggage. Then Mrs. Sandboys was in her glory. If ladies delight in the synthetical operation of packing, they certainly find an equal delight in the analytical process of unpacking—even as children take pleasure in building up their card-houses, and a like pleasure in blowing them down again. It was not long before Mrs. Sandboys, with Elcy at her elbow, was down on her knees in the kitchen, in front of a long open box, counting the several articles enumerated on a piece of paper gummed to the lid, to satisfy herself that none had been abstracted during their absence. And as she examined the state of her best caps and bonnets, she found them so tumbled, that she felt thoroughly convinced they had been worn by some parties—the wives of the railway men, she had no doubt—or why, as she said, should they have kept them so long on the way?