Everybody who has travelled by the Great Western Railway knows how joyously its well-appointed trains skim along the level country between Slough and London. He no doubt appreciated the speed--valued the wings with which he was flying--more than any of his fellow-passengers. He probably felt that no power on earth could overtake him, and that, if he could but dive into the mass of population in London, he would in perfect security flow with its streams unnoticed. But whatever may have been his fears--his hopes--his fancies--or his thoughts, there suddenly flashed along the wires of the electric telegraph which were stretched close beside him the following words:-- “A MURDER HAS JUST BEEN COMMITTED AT SALTHILL, AND THE SUSPECTED MURDERER WAS SEEN TO TAKE A FIRST-CLASS TICKET FOR LONDON BY THE TRAIN WHICH LEFT SLOUGH AT 7H. 42M. P.M. “HE IS IN THE GARB OF A QUAKER, WITH A BROWN GREATCOAT ON, WHICH REACHES NEARLY DOWN TO HIS FEET. HE IS IN THE LAST COMPARTMENT OF THE SECOND FIRST-CLASS CARRIAGE.” And yet, fast as these words flew like lightning past him, the information they contained, with all its details, as well as every secret thought that had preceded them, had already consecutively flown millions of times faster; indeed, at the very instant that, within the walls of the little cottage at Slough, there had been uttered that dreadful scream, it had simultaneously reached the judgment-seat of Heaven! On arriving at the Paddington Station, after mingling for some moments with the crowd, he got into an omnibus, and as it rumbled along, taking up one passenger and putting down another, he probably felt that his identity was every minute becoming confounded and confused by the exchange of fellow-passengers for strangers that was constantly taking place. But all the time he was thinking, the Cad of the omnibus--a policeman in disguise--knew that he held his victim like a rat in a cage. Without, however, apparently taking the slightest notice of him, he took one sixpence, gave change for a shilling, handed out this lady, stuffed in that one, until, arriving at the Bank, the guilty man, stooping as he walked towards the carriage-door, descended the steps;--paid his fare;--crossed over to the Duke of Wellington’s statue, where pausing for a few moments, anxiously to gaze around him, he proceeded to the Jerusalem Coffee House,--thence over London Bridge to the Leopard Coffee House in the Borough,--and finally to a lodging-house in Scott’s Yard, Cannon Street.