I found, when I reached home, a very batch of telegrams awaiting me. They had arrived, it seemed, in pretty quick succession, and had been brought down from the house. The sight of them first astounded, then frightened me. I opened one with a shrinking, not to say a slinking, feeling about my backbone, and instantly collapsed into a chair. My sickest apprehensions were realised. It was from Johnny, and fatefully potential of entanglements. With a beating pulse I examined the rest of the batch, and gave a groan of despair. The wretched boy had got, it seemed, on the track of some preposterous chimera, and was off after his quarry with a whoop. It had been enough for him to gather (quite mistakenly) that Pugsley was an enemy to my (non-existent) pretensions. Henceforth every act of that dyspeptic cleric was open to suspicion. For what had I not in one reckless moment made myself responsible? Suddenly, in the midst of my desperation, the picture of my friend, round and jocund, tiptoeing, tomahawk in hand, in the unconscious tracks of a poor evangelical missionary, rose before me and sent me off into a fit of helpless laughter. “Well,” I thought, when I had gasped myself sober, “the thing has started, and I’ve no means now of stopping it. I can only pray not to be included in its retributions.” Its retributions, indeed! Not on that day alone, but through many days to follow, did those unconscionable telegrams come swooping upon me, in flights and swarms, a plague of devouring locusts, desecrating my green solitude, keeping me in a perpetual flurry between shame and hysterics. I thought I should never hear the end of them--of the tap of their arrival, of the story they unfolded, of the sort of inebriated phraseology in which they were couched. And when at last the visitation stopped suddenly, I could hardly credit my release. But it did come at length; and then, when I could breathe once more in self-confidence, I set to classifying the whole mad array, and to endeavouring to make a consistent tale out of it. Whether or not I have succeeded in my object, let the reader decide from the following:-- 1. (Handed in at 12.10 P.M. Footover.) Watched house saw Tip emerge eleven small black handbag what containing thought suspicious followed tracked to station. The Eye.[1] 2. (Handed in at 12.15 P.M. Footover.) Still at station expect arrival Dog Tip at bookstall examining County Blue Book letter S funny. The Eye. 3. (Handed in at 2.2 P.M. Waterloo.) No Dog Tip took ticket Waterloo Eye also same compartment Tip opened bag took papers out and read manuscript convinced bearing on Button must get a look if possible Tip now at buffet cream buns and ginger-beer. The Eye.