"Well, that was a hot run I had. Whenever I turned the far corner of Baker Street I took to my heels, doubled back behind the block, and sprinted the whole length of the town. I had to tell another lie, however, for I saw Canlan in Baker Street, just when I was thinking of getting aboard the stage. The driver was in having a drink before starting and, so as to prevent him raising questions about my blanket-roll lying in the stage and me not being there, I told him I had forgotten something at this end of the town and that I would run along and get the business done, and he could pick me up in passing. Lucky he did n’t come out then or he would have wondered at the direction I took. You had n’t turned up, you see, and I knew I must let you know that it was all right." He paused and added: "But from to-day, no more lying. I don’t want when I come into this kingdom of mine to feel that I’ve got it at the expense of a hundred cowardly prevarications." He sat considering a little while. "If Canlan should by any chance get wind of our departure and follow up——" he began, and then closed his teeth sharply. "What then?" I asked. "He ’d be a dead man," said he, "and a good riddance to the world." "I ’d think murder worse than lying," said I. "Tut, tut!" said he. "You look at this from a prejudiced standpoint. Donoghue and I are going out to a certain goal. We ’ve arranged to win something for ourselves. Well, we ’re not going to win it with humbugging and lying. Where speech would spoil—we ’ll be silent; otherwise we ’re going to walk up like men and claim what’s coming to us, to use the phrase of the country. Heavens! When I think of what I ’ve seen, and been, and done, and then think of all this crawling way of going about anything—it makes me tired, to use the——" and he muttered the rest as though by force of habit but knowing it quite unnecessary to say. There was nothing startling on our journey till the incident befell which I promised to tell you. It was when we came to the Rest House, a two-storey frame house, with a planking built up in front of it two storeys higher, with windows painted thereon in black on a white background, making it look, from the road, like a four-storey building. When we dismounted there one of the men on the coach said to the proprietor, who had come out to the door: "What’s the colour of your hash slinger? Still got that Chink?" "I ’ve still got the Chinaman waiter, sir," replied the proprietor, in a loud, determined voice, "and if you don’t like to have him serve you—well you can——" "I intend to," said the man, a big, red-faced, perspiring fellow with bloodshot eyes. "I intend to. I ’ll do the other thing, as you were about to say;" and he remained seated in the coach, turning his broad back on the owner of the Rest Hotel.