‘Whom!—why, the escaped felon, Martin Babb.’ A cry. Eve had fainted. CHAPTER XXXVIII. TAKEN! WE must go back in time, something like an hour and a half or two hours, and follow the police and warders after they left Morwell, to understand how it happened that Martin fell into their hands. They had retired sulky and grumbling. They had been brought a long way, the two warders a very long way, for nothing. When they reached the down, one of the warders observed that he was darned if he had not turned his ankle on the rough stones of the lane. The other said he reckoned they had been shabbily treated, and it was not his ankle but his stomach had been turned by a glass of cider sent down into emptiness. Some cold beef and bread was what he wanted. Whereat he was snapped at by the other, who advised him to kill one of the bullocks on the moor and make his meal on that. ‘Hearken,’ said Joseph; ‘brothers, an idea has struck me. We have not captured the man, and so we shan’t have the reward.’ ‘Has it taken you half an hour to discover that?’ ‘Yes,’ answered Joseph simply. ‘Thinking and digesting are much the same. I ain’t a caterpillar that can eat and digest at once.’ ‘I wish I’d had another glass of cider,’ said one of the constables, ‘but these folk seemed in a mighty haste to get rid of us.’ ‘There is the “Hare and Hounds” at Goatadon,’ said Joseph. ‘That is a long bit out of the road,’ remonstrated the constable. ‘What is time to us police!’ answered Joseph. ‘It is made to be killed, like a flea.’ ‘And hops away as fast,’ said another. ‘Let us get back to Tavistock,’ said a warder. ‘Oh, if you wish it,’ answered Joseph; ‘only it do seem a cruel pity.’ ‘What is a pity?’ ‘Why, that you should ha’ come so far and not seen the greatest wonder of the world.’ ‘What may that be?’ ‘The fat woman,’ answered Joseph Woodman. ‘The landlady of the “Hare and Hounds.” You might as well go to Egypt and not see the pyramids, or to Rome and not see the Pope, or to London and not see the Tower.’ ‘I don’t make any account of fat women,’ said the warder, who had turned his ankle. ‘But this,’ argued Joseph, ‘is a regular marvel. She’s the fattest woman out of a caravan—I believe the fattest in England; I dare say the very fattest in the known world. What there be in the stars I can’t say.’ ‘Now,’ said the warder, who had turned his stomach, ‘what do _you_ call fat?’ He was in a captious mood. ‘What do I call fat?’ repeated Joseph; ‘why, that woman. Brother, if you and I were to stretch our arms at the farthest, taking hold of each other with one hand, we couldn’t compass her and take hold with the other.’ ‘I don’t believe it,’ said the warder emphatically. ‘’Tain’t possible a mortal could be so big,’ said the other warder. ‘I swear it,’ said Joseph with great earnestness. ‘There is never a woman in the world,’ said the warder with the bad ankle, ‘whose waist I couldn’t encircle, and I’ve tried lots.’