"Yes," I says, "and I'm afraid there'll be one or two awkward chicks as well." The next thing the sergeant did was to ring well at the door after sending another man, who now came up, round to the mews at the back to be on the look-out for escaping in that direction; and then, as he climbed over the railings to get at the parlour window, we heard a most tremendous screaming. "Come now, there is a lady in the case after all," said the sergeant; and then, telling our other man to mind the prisoner, he made ready to get in at the window, where all looked very uncomfortably dark and treacherous. "Shall I go first?" I said, all in a fidget at the same time lest he should say "Yes," for I don't mind owning that it looked uncommonly like putting one's head in a trap to go in at that window; and I felt a bit nervous, if not frightened. The next moment I was over the railings too; and, holding my bull's-eye so as to throw all the light into the room I could, when in went the sergeant, and directly after, almost before you could say "Jack Robinson," there was a bit of a scuffle and the sound of a heavy blow, and some one went down with a crash; while, as I leaned forward and held in my light, I just caught a glimpse of some one, and at the same moment a heavy, numbing blow came down on my hand, and the lanthorn was knocked out, and fell with a clang under my feet in the area, while the silence which followed showed me plainly enough that it was not the lady in the case who had been knocked down, but the sergeant. "Now, my lad," I said to the other policeman, as I stood rubbing and shaking my hand, "one of us must go in; sergeant's down, safe." "Well," he said, "you've been longest in the force, you'd best go." "Wrong," I said; "you were in before me." "Well, but," he said, "I'm a married man, and you ain't." "Wrong again," I said; "I'm married, and have two little ones."