Presently there came a heavy knock at the front door; Mrs. Siggs, with a hand on her ample bosom, started, and looked appealingly at Toby. That gentleman, rising with a determined countenance, proceeded to the door, and flung it open. Exactly what he was prepared to see, it is impossible to say; but he was certainly not prepared for the sight which met his eyes. Out of the darkness there staggered into the place a solitary figure—that of Inspector Tokely. His hat was gone—one side of his face was grazed and bleeding; he was covered with mud and water almost from head to foot; and his coat was torn right across one shoulder. Gasping and weary, he shook a fist in the face of the astonished Toby Siggs, and snapped out his wrath at that innocent man. “You scoundrel!” he shouted—“You infernal villain! This is all a plot—a conspiracy—you know it is! I’m lured out of this place, and go racing and chasing across country—where there are no street lamps as there ought to be, and no constables to whistle for. I bark my face against a tree—put there on purpose, I’ve no doubt, for me to run my head against; I fall into a ditch, which ought to have been drained long ago; I lose my hat, which cost nine-and-sixpence; I tear my coat on a barbed wire fence, which ought never to have been put up. And—to crown it all—I lose my prisoner!” Betty Siggs, who had come to the door of the little parlour, suddenly clapped her hands and cried out—with an exclamation of so much relief, that the Inspector turned savagely upon her. “Yes, Ma’am—laugh—giggle—clap your hands—scream with joy, Ma’am! I like it—it does me good! How will _you_ like it, when you appear in the dock—the dock, Ma’am!—on a charge of aiding and abetting a prisoner, to escape? What about windows covered with curtains——” “What would you ’ave ’em covered with?” retorted Betty, with a laugh—“wall paper?” “Never mind, Ma’am—never mind,” retorted Tokely, viciously. “At the present moment, Ma’am, I will go to bed. The Law, Ma’am, can wait. Prepare yourself, Ma’am, for the dock—for the dock, I say!” With these words, and utterly scornful of Betty Siggs’s peals of laughter, the Inspector made his way upstairs to his chamber—leaving a trail of muddy water to mark his passage. “That chap’s done me good!” exclaimed Betty, wiping her eyes, and turning to Toby, who was staring in ludicrous amazement after Tokely. “I just wanted summink to stir me up—I did—an’ that chap’s done it!” “You take care, ole gal, that ’e don’t stir _you_ up,” retorted Toby, shaking his head. “The Law ’as got a ’eap be’ind it—an’ you ain’t got the figger to be redooced by skilly, nor the fingers for oakum-pickin’. An’, mark my words, that’s what you’ll come to, ole gal, if you mocks at the Law!”