"They rang me up from the station, and told me there was burglars in my shop. Where be they? Mr. Noakes, what have been going on? What have come to your eye?" "You may well ask, Wilkins. I came to have a word with you about that estimate, you know——" Wilkins tried to look as if he knew—"and these fellows, one an assistant of yours, I understand, set on me and half murdered me—took me for a burglar, ha! ha!" "He was trying his keys on this drawer, Mr. Wilkins," said Eves. "And why not?" demanded Wilkins, indignantly. "Why not, I ask ’ee? ’Tis my drawer, I keep my papers there, and Mr. Noakes having come to see me about an estimate, of course he saves time and gets the estimate out ready." "And Brown will take ’em in charge for an unprovoked assault," said Noakes. "Well, now, Mr. Noakes," said Wilkins, soothingly, "I wouldn’t go so far as that. Not if it was me. It do seem ’twas a mistake. They took ’ee for a burglar—a nat’ral mistake, that’s what it was, and my advice to one and all is, let it bide and say no more about it. We don’t want no newspapers getting a hold of things like this. Won’t do none of us no good—that’s what I say." Eves was loth to let Noakes go scot free, but after a whispered consultation with Templeton, who pointed out the improbability of any magistrate being induced to believe, in face of Wilkins’s explanation, that the mayor was a burglar, he grudgingly agreed to withdraw the charge. Templeton took the precaution of removing all his own papers from the drawer, and leaving Noakes with Wilkins, returned with Eves to Mrs. Pouncey’s cottage. "So much for your rough diamond!" said Eves. "Noakes evidently didn’t know before to-day that you were here, and when I saw him confabbing with Wilkins he was no doubt asking all about you. Wilkins must have told him about your inventions, and he thought a visit to your drawer would give him an idea or two, and enable him to get in first with a patent." "But you don’t suppose Wilkins was in the plot?" "I don’t know about that, but he’s clearly under Noakes’s thumb. Some one said that you know a man by the company he keeps. Wilkins keeps uncommonly bad company." "I’m disappointed in him, I confess," said Templeton. "To-morrow I’ll give him a week’s notice, and work on my own for the rest of my leave." *III* Next morning Templeton, after breakfast, went to the workshop as usual, leaving Eves to his own devices until lunch-time. Eves spent an hour pottering about in the shed, and was particularly interested in the fire extinguishing composition. "Rummy old sport!" he thought. "I suppose he will strike something really good one of these days, and be a bloated millionaire while I’m pinching on a miserable pension. Wonder what temperature this stuff melts at, by the way." He found, standing against the wall, a metal tray pierced with holes which had been plugged with the composition. A thermometer hung on a nail.