Meantime, another traveller—a fugitive like himself—had set his face in the same direction; with no settled purpose in his mind, save to hide, until such time as he could formulate a plan of action. Not daring to trust to the railway, lest his description should have been telegraphed, and men should be on the lookout for him, Philip Chater had started off to walk to London. Coming, long after the sun was up, into a straggling suburb, which yet had some faint touches of the country left upon it, he sat down, outside a small public-house, on a bench—ordered some bread and cheese and ale—and ate and drank ravenously. “Well,” he muttered to himself, with a little laugh—“yesterday was a busy day. We start with a burglary, and with the fact that Arthur Barnshaw has discovered me in a forgery, and—so he believes—in an attempt to steal his sister’s diamond necklace. Compared with what has gone before, these things are mere trifles.” He laughed again, took a pull at his beer, and shrugged his shoulders. “Let me see—what happened after that? Oh, to be sure; I went round, to try and have a word with old Betty; I hated the thought that she—dear little mother of the old days—should think so badly of me. I felt that I could trust her to keep my secret, if necessary. Then, after waiting about for a long time, that girl—(Clara—Harry called her)—came out, to tell me that the strange man I had seen through the window was from London, and probably held a warrant for my arrest. And then that jealous idiot Harry, must jump in, and come scouring over the country after me with the policeman in tow. Well, I got away that time at all events.” He sat for some time, with a musing smile upon his face, stirring the dust at his feet with the toe of his boot. At the moment, he had clean forgotten the danger which threatened him, or the necessity for further flight. “Dear little mother!” he whispered—“how glad she was to see me; how glad to know that her boy had come back again. I’m glad I went back to the place, after the policeman gave up the chase as hopeless. Heigho—I suppose I must be moving——Hullo—what the devil do you want?” Some one had stopped before him—some one with remarkably old and broken boots. Raising his eyes rapidly upwards to the face of the owner of the boots, Philip Chater gave a start of surprise and dismay. The Shady ’un—looking a little more disreputable than usual—stood before him.