"The case was taken up without delay. The statement that the constable who had detected what was taking place had been half-murdered was an exaggeration, as the appearance of the officer himself in the witness-box disclosed. But he had been roughly handled. His head was bandaged, he carried his arm in a sling, and he bore himself generally as one who had been in the wars. My experience, small as it is, teaches that constables on such occasions are wont, perhaps not unnaturally, to make the most of their injuries; and, to say the least, the prisoner had not escaped scot free. His skull had been laid open, two of his teeth had been knocked down his throat, his whole body was black and blue with bruises. Indeed his battered appearance so excited my sympathy that then and there I offered him my gratuitous services in his defence. My offer was accepted. I did what I could. "However, there was very little that could be done. The burglary, it seemed, had occurred at a place called Clover Cottage." "Why," cried Ella, "this is Clover Cottage!" "Yes," said Jack, shaking his head with what he meant to be mysterious significance, "as you correctly observe, this is Clover Cottage. Didn't I tell you you'd see the hand of Providence? You just wait a bit, you'll be dumbfounded." Mr. Graham continued. "Clover Cottage it appeared was unoccupied. There were in it neither tenants nor goods. So far as the evidence showed, it contained nothing at all. Being found in an absolutely empty house is not, as a rule, an offence which meets with a severe punishment. I was at a loss, therefore, to understand why my client should have made such a desperate defence and thus have enormously increased the measure of his guilt in the way he had done. Had it not been for what was termed, and perhaps rightly, his assault on the police, the affair would have been settled out of hand. As it was, the magistrate felt that he had no option but to send the case to trial; which he did do there and then. "Before his trial I had more than one interview with my client in his cell at Wandsworth Gaol. He told me, by way of explaining his conduct, an extraordinary story; so extraordinary that, from that hour to this, I have never been able to make up my mind as to its truth. "Under ordinary circumstances I should have had no hesitation in affirming his statement, or rather his series of statements, was a more or less badly contrived set of lies. But there was something about the fellow which assured me that at any rate he himself believed what he said. He was by no means an ordinary criminal type, and there seemed no reason to doubt his assertion that this was the first felonious transaction he had ever had a hand in. He admitted he had led an irregular life, and that he had come down the ladder of respectability with a run, but he stoutly maintained that this was the first time he had ever done anything deserving the attention of the police.