"And the lady?" I asked. "She is a third. They have been working in concert for two or three years now; and will give us trouble yet before their career is stopped. But for being singularly clever, we should have had them long ago. And so they did not know each other in the train! I dare say not!" The man spoke with quiet authority. He was a detective come down from London to Brighton that morning; whether for a private trip, or on business, he did not say. I related to him what had passed in the train. "Ay," said he, after listening. "They contrived to put the lamp out before starting. The lady took the pocket-book during the commotion she caused the dog to make, and the lord received it from her hand when he gave her back the dog. Cleverly done! He had it about him, young sir, when he got out at the next station. _She_ waited to be searched, and to throw the scent off. Very ingenious, but they'll be a little too much so some fine day." "Can't you take them up?" demanded Tod. "No." "I will accuse them of it," he haughtily said. "If I meet them again on this pier----" "Which you won't do to-day," interrupted the man. "I heard them say they were not going for some days." "Ah, but they have seen you now. And I think--I'm not quite sure--that he saw me. They'll be off by the next train." "Who are _they_?" asked Tod, pointing to the end of the pier. "Unsuspecting people whose acquaintance they have casually made here. Yes, an hour or two will see Brighton quit of the pair." And it was so. A train was starting within an hour, and Tod and I galloped to the station. There they were: in a first-class carriage: not apparently knowing each other, I verily believe, for he sat at one door and she at the other, passengers dividing them. "Lambs between two wolves," remarked Tod. "I have a great mind to warn the people of the sort of company they are in. Would it be actionable, Johnny?" The train moved off as he was speaking. And may I never write another word, if I did not catch sight of the man-servant and his cockade in the next carriage behind them! IX. DICK MITCHEL. I did not relate this story by my own wish. To my mind there's nothing very much in it to relate. At the time it was written the newspapers were squabbling about farmers' boys and field labour and political economy. "And," said a gentleman to me, "as you were at the top and tail of the thing when it happened, and are well up in the subject generally, Johnny Ludlow, you may as well make a paper of it." That was no other than the surgeon, Duffham.