Directly the first flush of joy was over Bess grew nervous. Every sound terrified her. She dreaded lest the police might suddenly appear upon the scene. It seemed so cruel that, now they were united after these long years of absence, George should still be a hunted felon, with a price upon his head. The old showman and his good wife saw how matters lay, and did their best to cheer them. Shakspeare and granny were not in the secret of the circumstances under which George had been found, and they could not understand the nervous little jumps which Bess kept giving when there was a knock next door, or the sound of a cab stopping in the street. George concealed his feelings better than his wife, but he, too, was nervous. They had left the vans and the horses a little way out, in charge of the men, who were to move slowly across country with them to the starting-point for the next tour, and George, though well disguised in a slouch hat and Mr. Jarvis’s long coat, was in an agony of fear as they came by a suburban line of railway to a point where they could take a cab to the door. He felt sure that a description of him had been telegraphed to all the stations, and that there would be plenty of people on the look-out to earn the reward which had doubtless been offered. He would have been still more nervous had he known that for days a stout gentleman had been hanging about the street looking up at this very house—a stout gentleman, who had recognised Mrs. Smith’s face, and who had also read in the papers an account of a convict’s escape, and had ascertained that this runaway convict was his old lodger, Mr. George Smith. Mr. Jabez Duck, applying himself diligently to his new business of private inquiry agent, had progressed rapidly in his employer’s favour, and found himself soon very fairly off, with a good salary, liberal journey ‘exes,’ and a house full of lodgers at home, who more than paid his rent. He and Susan occasionally had a little flare up, but as a rule they jogged along very comfortably. It was in the course of his professional perusal of ‘Lost, Stolen, or Strayed,’ the agony column and the mysterious crime department of the daily press, that Jabez lighted upon the intelligence that his old lodger, George Smith, had escaped and eluded his pursuers. Jabez had previously by accident recognised Mrs. Smith, as she stood looking out of the window of Shakspeare Jarvis’s room one day, and Jabez said to himself that if George Smith got to London undiscovered he would make his way to where his wife was. When the days went on and the escaped convict was not heard of, Jabez felt sure that he had got safely through the country and was coming townward. Here was a chance for him to distinguish himself in his business and get his name in all the papers. He might beat the professional detectives at their own game, and show how much cleverer he was than the Scotland Yard folks.