“Well, he looked hawful, as I said afore, and I thought as he was a going to faint. He didn’t, however. He rung the bell and ordered a pint of gin, and drunk it off, and then he seemed better. ‘How come you here?’ says he. ‘How come you here?’ says I. ‘You seems to have been travelling; and what’s that blood on yer shirt?’ says I. ‘Blood?’ says he. ‘Yes,’ says I. ‘O, I had a bit of a row.’--‘O,’ says I. With that I says, ‘Where’s my gal?’ and then he begins to say as how she’d treated him shameful, and a lot of it, and gets to abusing me. Then he says, ‘We’re relations, you know;’ and I says, ‘Yes, of a sort.’--‘I was a gentleman,’ says he, ‘till I know’d your daughter.’--‘Perhaps,’ says I. ‘Fact!’ says he; and then he tells me how she brought him to poverty, and all that, which I quite believe; and then, after his grub he says, says he, ‘We’re relations--brothers in distress, deceived by a wretched gal;’ and it was a fact too; ‘so let’s drink,’ says he; and he had another pint of gin, but I was not to be tempted. However, I has a little, and then I leaves him sitting afore the fire, drunk I should think, and he paid for what he had: so I leaves him, as he had took a bed for the night. ‘You’ll stand my friend?’ says he, as I was going; ‘relations, you know!’ and all that. When business was over, about twelve o’clock, I goes again, and I finds him muddling over the fire, still drinking gin, and I hears as he’d changed a five-pound-note; so says I, ‘Guvner--son-in-law, money’s flush with you;’ and he says, ‘Father-in-law, it is; and if you’ll be my friend, it shall be with you: swear,’ says he, and his hands trembled awful to behold: so I swears. ‘I’m hawful bad,’ says he, ‘being out in the rain; be my friend--take care of me;’ and I says, ‘All right, guvner;’ he puts his hand into his coat, pulls out a pocket-book, and gives me them two notes; then he seemed as if he was off his head, and I and the gal sees him to bed. That ere pocket-book, and the blood and altogether bothered me a good deal; and when I changed that cheque, thinks I, I’ll get rid on ’em; ’cos you see, I didn’t know what might happen, and somehow I thought as my son-in-law might have had a hand in the job, and you see, as we were sort of relations, and all that, I didn’t like to say nothing, and especially as he wor so bad--so hawful ill--and that’s the whole truth o’ the matter.” “And what became of him?” asked the detective; “don’t answer unless you choose.” “O, bless yer life, he’s there now in bed, and it’s my humble opinion as he’ll never stir out of it again.” He did “stir out of it again,” nevertheless, and the decayed showman and his son-in-law were in Brazencrook lock-up within an hour, to the relief and release of Lionel Hammerton; for the Brazencrook chief deemed it necessary to get two magistrates at once to authorise the Captain’s release from custody.