"I was driving to Daunton on a very nasty, pitch-black night. You know how beastly dark it is between the woods at Byford Park? Well, I'd just got there when I passed two fellows skulking along under the wall. They stood back--it was rather a near shave with no proper lights on--and I flashed my electric torch full on them. Blest if they weren't the very chaps we were looking for. And I'd got to run 'em in somehow, all by myself. And two to one. It wasn't any joke, I can tell you. Goodness knows what nasty knives and things they might have had on 'em." "What _did_ you do?" "Do? I drove on fifty yards ahead, and pulled up the car outside the porter's lodge at Byford. Then I got out and came on and met 'em. They were trying to bolt into the wood when I turned my torch on them again and shouted 'Halt!' in a parade voice. "They halted, hands up to the salute. I thought the habit would be too much for 'em when they heard the word of command. I said, 'You've got to come along with me.' I didn't know how on earth I was going to take them if they wouldn't go. And they'd started dodging. So I tried it on again: 'Halt!' Regular parade stunt. And they halted again all right. Then I harangued them. I said, 'Shun, you blighters! I'm a special constable, and I've got a warrant here for your arrest.' "I hadn't. I'd nothing but an Inland Revenue Income Tax form. But I whipped it out of my breast pocket and trained my light on the royal arms at the top. That was enough for 'em. Then I shouted again in my parade voice, 'Right about face! Quick march!' "And I got them marching. I marched them the two miles from Byford, through Lower Speed, and up the hill to Wyck and into the police station. And we ran 'em in for robbery and assault." "It was clever of you." "No; nothing but presence of mind and bluff, and showing that you weren't going to stand any nonsense. But I don't suppose Corbett or Hawtrey or any of those chaps would have thought of it." Barbara wondered: "Supposing I were to turn on him and say, 'You old humbug, you know I don't believe a word of it. You know you didn't march them a hundred yards.' Or '_I_ saw you this afternoon.' What would he look like?" It was inconceivable that she should say these things. If she was to go on with her study of him alone she would go on in the spirit they had begun in, she and Ralph. That spirit admitted nothing but boundless amusement, boundless joy in him. Moral indignation would have been a false note; it would have been downright irreverence towards the God who made him. What if he did omit to mention that the nasty, dangerous fellows turned out to be two feeble youths, half imbecile with shell-shock and half drunk, and that it was Mr. Hawtrey, arriving opportunely in his car, who took them over the last mile to the police station? As it happened Mr. Waddington had frankly forgotten these details as inessential to his story. (He _had_ marched them a mile.)