He was himself remarkably changed. He was dressed in a pea-jacket, which evidently did not belong to him, for it hardly reached his middle, and the sleeves were so short that his forearms were half bare, showing that he wore nothing beneath this borrowed garment. Below it he had on white knee-breeches, with green stains of bruised grass on them. The breeches were made with a broad ilap in front, under which, and passing round his waist, was a scarf of crimson silk. From his knees to his socks, the edges of which had fallen over his laced boots, his legs were visible, naked, and muscular. On his face was a mask of sweat, dust, and blood, partly rubbed away in places by a sponge, the borders of its passage marked by black streaks. Underneath his left eye was a mound of bluish flesh nearly as large as a walnut. The jaw below it, and the opposite cheek, were severely bruised, and his lip was cut through at one corner. He had no hat; his close-cropped hair was disordered, and his ears were as though they had been rubbed with coarse sand-paper. Lydia looked at him for some seconds, and he at her, speechless. Then she tried to speak, failed, and sunk into her chair. “I didn’t know there was any one here,” he said, in a hoarse, panting whisper. “The police are after me. I have fought for an hour, and run over a mile, and I’m dead beat--I can go no farther. Let me hide in the back room, and tell them you haven’t seen any one, will you?” “What have you done?” she said, conquering her weakness with an effort, and standing up. “Nothing,” he replied, groaning occasionally as he recovered breath. “Business, that’s all.” “Why are the police pursuing you? Why are you in such a dreadful condition?” Cashel seemed alarmed at this. There was a mirror in the lid of a paper-case on the table. He took it up and looked at himself anxiously, but was at once relieved by what he saw. “I’m all right,” he said. “I’m not marked. That mouse”--he pointed gayly to the lump under his eye-“will run away to-morrow. I am pretty tidy, considering. But it’s bellows to mend with me at present. Whoosh! My heart is as big as a bullock’s after that run.” “You ask me to shelter you,” said Lydia, sternly. “What have you done? Have you committed murder?” “No!” exclaimed Cashel, trying to open his eyes widely in his astonishment, but only succeeding with one, as the other was gradually closing. “I tell you I have been fighting; and it’s illegal. You don’t want to see me in prison, do you? Confound him,” he added, reverting to her question with sudden wrath; “a steam-hammer wouldn’t kill him. You might as well hit a sack of nails. And all my money, my time, my training, and my day’s trouble gone for nothing! It’s enough to make a man cry.” “Go,” said Lydia, with uncontrollable disgust. “And do not let me see which way you go. How dare you come to me?”