"I did not come for to be insulted," answered Mr. Sparrow sullenly, as preferring a negative handling of an awkward question. But Mr. Popkiss held on to the positive. "I ask you what you did come for," he insisted, his severe eye suggesting how much more weight his tone might have carried had his bones carried less. "He was under the table." Mr. Doutfire made the statement without heat, as though content to let the bare and damning fact speak for itself. "Most irregular," said Popkiss weakly, at a loss exactly what to do, and wishing, but for the slur on his house, that the law's representative would take the matter out of his hands. "Look here," he went on, with an ill-timed and coldly received wink at the detective, "if you want to play under the table, stop at home and play under your own; if I catch you under mine or anywhere on my premises where there is no call for you to be, I'll pull your wing feathers out, Mr. Sparrow. Now, hop off." Under other circumstances Mr. Sparrow might have been ready with a more or less pertinent rejoinder to the stout inn-keeper's _brutum fulmen_; as it was, with the glittering symbols of durance dangling before his fascinated eyes, he was glad enough to find himself in a position to depart even with his repartee unspoken. "Mercy," commanded her father, dropping the jocular element in his severity; "go into the bar, I'll talk to you presently." And Miss Popkiss, with the uneasy conviction that she had made a fool of herself, was glad to obey. "Now, Mr. D., what gives us the pleasure of seeing you here to-day?" inquired the host, lapsing without an effort into affability. "I didn't notice you come in." "No," replied Doutfire, as he dropped the minatory tokens of his office into his pocket; "I made free of the window--just in the way of business, you understand. Fact is," he continued in a more confidential tone and with a quite unnecessary repetition of his trick of glancing round the room in search of impossible eavesdroppers, "I've had a wire from town. You are likely to have a queer customer to-day." The fat face of Mr. Popkiss showed no tangible sign of the effect the news had on him. "What, coming here, to this house?" he asked futilely. "For Bunbury Races to-morrow, I suppose?" "Maybe," Mr. Doutfire agreed, in the tone of one who could say more if he chose, "young swell-mob, I reckon. Travelled by nine-thirty train from Waterloo, alighted at Faxfleet and inquired the way here. I was ten minutes late at the station and got a lift on here, calculating to overtake him. He must have gone by the fields." "What has he done, Mr. D.?" Popkiss inquired huskily.