Mr Blackford thought it best to laugh the matter off. ‘Well,’ said he jocularly, ‘if we can but catch sight of them, I’ll soon disabuse them of any such idea.—Don’t you pay any attention to their nonsense. Of course they would like to put you off the scent. The rascals! I’d give a good deal to get fairly at them. It won’t be long, now, before I do so. We are well on their track; and once we have them before the magistrate, we’ll pay them out for all the trouble they’ve given us.’ Willoughby rose to go. ‘I hope, as you say, that it will not be long now,’ said he, with a doubtful and dissatisfied air. ‘You see, it is wearing me out, and I have spent a good deal of money over it, besides. One of them threatened to kill me last night. If anything of that kind is to be attempted, they won’t find me an easy victim, Mr Blackford! I shall try to be beforehand with them, at anyrate. I’m not a man to be played with too long.’ And there was a look in the madman’s eyes as he spoke, and a kind of quiver through his brawny muscles, which seemed to say that the moment was fast approaching when playing with him would be a very risky amusement indeed. ‘By George!’ said the solicitor to himself, wiping his forehead, when he was once more alone, ‘this is getting rather too warm. The fellow gave me quite a turn. If he takes _that_ notion into his head, things may become awkward.’ And Mr Blackford decided that the time had arrived for communicating with Willoughby’s friends in Cape Town. He would have tried to induce the police to move in the matter at once; but this remedy, as he knew, was difficult and uncertain, and should it fail, would but add to the danger. He wrote off then and there, representing in feeling language the condition of his unfortunate client, which he stated he had only just discovered, and urging that some one should come to England immediately, with a view to putting the lunatic’s person and property under proper control. Of course he said nothing about the money he had extorted for his phantom services. Fortunately, it was against his principles to give receipts unless they were demanded, which in this case they had not been, and all the payments had been made in cash; so he left it to be inferred that his exertions had been gratuitously rendered entirely from a sense of duty, and delicately hinted at their continuance on a different footing. Practice ‘In Lunacy’ is very lucrative; and Mr Blackford was not the man to neglect such chances as came in his way.