"I should like to know who'd go and cut up smooth about it?" answered the indignant Tibbles. "Why, if you could have a hangel in the detective business—which luckily you can't, for the wings would cut out anything as mean as legs, and be the ruin of the purfession—the temper of that hangel would give way under what I've gone through. Hanging about this windy station, which the number of criss-cross draughts cuttin' in from open doors and winders would lead a hignorant person to believe there was seventeen p'ints of the compass at the very least—hangin' about to watch train after train, till there ain't anything goin' in the way of sarce as yen haven't got to stand from the porters; or sittin' in the coffee-room of the hotel yonder, watchin' and listenin' for the next train, till bein' there to keep an appointment with your master is the hollerest of mockeries." Mr. Carter took his irate subordinate to the coffee-room of the Station Hotel, where Mr. Tibbles had engaged a bed and taken a few hours' sleep in the dead interval between the starting of the last train at night and the first in the morning. The detective ordered a substantial breakfast, with a couple of glasses of pale brandy, neat, to begin with; and Mr. Tibbles' equanimity was restored, under the influence of ham, eggs, mutton-cutlet, a broiled sole, and a quart or so of boiling coffee. Mr. Carter told his assistant very briefly that he'd been wasting his time and trouble on a false track, and that he should give the matter up. Sawney Tom received this announcement with a great deal of champing and working of the jaws, and with rather a doubtful expression in his dull red eyes; but he accepted the payment which his employer offered him, and agreed to depart for London by the ten o'clock train. "And whatever I do henceforth in this business, I do single-handed," Mr. Carter said to himself, as he turned his back upon his companion. At five o'clock that afternoon the detective found himself at the Shorncliffe station, where he hired a fly and drove on post-haste to Lisford cottage. The neat little habitation of the late naval commander looked pretty much as Mr. Carter had seen it last, except that in one of the upper windows there was a bill—a large paper placard—announcing that this house was to let, furnished; and that all information respecting the same was to be obtained of Mr. Hogson, grocer, Lisford. Mr. Carter gave a long whistle. "The bird's flown," he muttered. "It wasn't likely he'd stop here to be caught."