"I kep' it by me for a month or two, and then I gave warning to leave. I thought I'd have my fling, and I had made acquaintance with her--that lady you've just spoke of--and somehow she wormed out of me that I had got it, and I let her dispose of it for me, for she said she knew how to do it without danger." "What did you get for it?" The skeleton shook his head. "Thirty-four pounds, and I had counted on a hundred and fifty. She took her oath she had not helped herself to a sixpence." "Oaths are plentiful with some ladies," remarked Mr. Pullet. "She stood to it she hadn't kep' a farthing, and she stopped and helped me to spend the change. After that was done she went over to stop with somebody else who was in luck. And I have tried to go on, and I can't: honestly or dishonestly, it seems all one: nothing prospers, and I'm naked and famishing. I wish I was dying." "Evil courses rarely do prosper, Nicholls," said the officer, as he called in the policemen and consigned the gentleman to their care. So Gerard Hope was innocent! "But how was it you skilful detectives could not be on this man's scent?" asked Colonel Hope of Mr. Pullet, when he heard the tale. "Colonel, I was thrown off it. Your positive belief in your nephew's guilt infected me; appearances were certainly very strong against him. Neither was his own manner altogether satisfactory to my mind. He treated the obvious suspicion of him more as a jest than in earnest; never, so far as I heard, giving a downright hearty denial to it." "He was a fool," interjected the colonel. "Also," continued Mr. Pullet, "Miss Dalrymple's evidence served to throw me off other suspicion. She said, if you remember, sir, that she did not leave the room; but it now appears that she did leave it when your nephew did, though only for a few moments. Those few moments sufficed to do the job." "It is strange she could not tell the exact truth," growled the colonel. "She probably thought she was exact enough, since she remained outside the door, and could answer for it that no one entered by it. She forgot the window. I thought of the window the instant the loss was mentioned to me; but Miss Dalrymple's assertion, that she never had the window out of her view, prevented my dwelling on it. I did go to the next door, and saw this very fellow who committed the robbery, but his manner was sufficiently satisfactory. He talked too freely; I did not like that; but I found he had been in the same service fifteen months; and, as I must repeat, in my mind the guilt lay with another." "It is a confoundedly unpleasant affair for me," cried the colonel. "I have published my nephew's disgrace all over London." "It is more unpleasant for him, colonel," was the rejoinder of Mr. Pullet.