The arrival of the police at length put an end to the whole affair, and the hawker, with a dense crowd after him, was carried off, struggling and bellowing among four of the stoutest of the force, each holding him by one of his extremities. On being searched at the station-house, Mr. Sandboys’ pocket-book was found in the hawker’s possession; in one of its compartments were the cards of address belonging to that gentleman. The authorities, believing these to be the rightful property of the flower-seller, proceeded at once to enter, among the list of offenders of that day, the name of Mr. Christopher Sandboys, of Craven-street, Strand, as having been found drunk, disorderly, and incapable of taking care of himself. The reader knows the occurrences that followed. A messenger was despatched to the residence of Mr. Sandboys, to apprise that gentleman’s family of his unpleasant position. * * * * * Mrs. Sandboys had been gone but a short while, before Cursty, who had been “dropped,” as the idiom runs, by the omnibus, at the top of the street, staggered, half asleep and half awake, up to the door. He had no sooner set foot on the door-mat, than Mrs. Fokesell, who had espied him from the kitchen window, and run up to answer his knock, threw up her hands in astonishment, and exclaimed, in a familiar way, “How in the world did you ever get out?” The innocent Christopher was unable to comprehend either the cause of the lady’s surprise, or the meaning of her question. “What do’sta mean, woman?” he said. “Oh!” returned Mrs. Fokesell, winking her eye as she nudged his elbow; “you needn’t mind telling me—I knows all about it. There’s been a party up here, and told us of all your goings on.” “My gangings an!” exclaimed Cursty. “Ye may well say that, for I’ve been half ow’r London.” “Very well turned off”!” retorted Mrs. Fokesell; “but it won’t do. We’re up to all your tricks, we are: so you’d much better confess at once. Oh, you’re a sly old fox—though perhaps you ain’t much wuss than the rest of you men. Fokesell was almost as bad—hardly a pin to choose betwixt you.”’ Mr. Sandboys, fatigued and vexed with the futility of his journey, felt in no way inclined for jesting; so, brushing past the unceremonious landlady, he darted up the stairs to the family garret. Mrs. Fokesell, however, in anticipation of a “scene,” which she longed to witness, hastened after him, and was just in time to behold Elcy throw herself into her father’s arms, and burst into subdued hysterics at the unexpected pleasure of his return. For a few minutes the landlady stood unobserved at the doorway, and while Cursty was wondering within himself why his daughter should receive him with so unusual an outburst of affection, and coupling her tears with the mysterious conduct and insinuations of Mrs. Fokesell, he began to ask himself, half in fear, “What fresh disaster could have befallen them now?”