Mr. Linker, making a break for freedom in another direction, reached Amsterdam and was there marked down by the police. Whether he would ever have got to Russia, or what would have happened to him there if he had, we do not know. It turned out to be unnecessary for him to go beyond Amsterdam. Hinton got no further than an hotel in Paramé. Jimmy went back to the vicarage. He found Beth and Mary anxious and troubled. Mrs. Eames had gone up to the church, where she expected to find her husband. She intended, so Beth said, to induce that unfortunate man to go down to the cave and drive away the policeman, by force if necessary. "Beth," said Jimmy, "we're in a middling tight place, all of us, especially me. I've told you that I smuggled over a few stockings for you and Mary." "Surely there won't be a row over a couple of pairs of silk stockings," said Mary. "Nobody could be fool enough to make a fuss about that, not a real fuss." "As a matter of fact there are six dozen pairs," said Jimmy. "But----" "How gorgeous!" said Mary. "Three dozen each. Jimmy, we must get them somehow. Suppose I go and make myself perfectly sweet to that policeman. He might be beguiled into letting me----" "Do shut up, Mary," said Beth anxiously. "This is serious. Go on, Jimmy. What were you going to say?" "If it was only the stockings I've smuggled," said Jimmy, "there wouldn't be much said about it, but the damned lugger was half full of brandy and wine for Hinton and bales of silk for that sneaking ruffian Linker." "Will they be arrested?" said Beth. "Don't say they'll be hanged. They don't hang people for smuggling nowadays, do they?" "They won't be arrested or hanged if I can help it," said Jimmy. "Not that I'd care if they were. I'd be glad. Those two sneaking cowards have bolted, leaving the rest of us to take what's coming, and it'll be mighty unpleasant, unless----" "Will they put you in prison, Jimmy?" said Mary. "They may. I don't know, and I don't much care. It won't be for very long, anyhow. What I mind is the infernal mess Uncle Evie will be in, and your aunt, and the bishop, a thoroughly decent old boy that bishop, and all the rest of them. They'll never be able to hold up their heads again. What I mean to say is, it doesn't matter about a fellow like me. But how can Uncle Evie go on being a leading statesman and all that? How can the bishop go on preaching the way bishops do? How can your aunt go on being a vicar's wife, if once it comes out that they've all been deliberately defrauding the revenue on a large scale?" "Do you mean to say that Aunt Agatha will have to give up being married to Uncle Timothy?" said Beth. "She never will, whatever they say or do to her." "She'll have to," said Jimmy. "Either that or he'll have to resign the parish, unless we can pull them out of the mess they're in."