This seemed not bad at all, and quite worthy of the man who had so neatly befooled M^cSweeny, but I only grinned unfeelingly in his simple face, and said dryly that “I believed so,” and bundled him without ceremony into the gig. “But—but—ye don’t mean to tell me ye’re going to take me instead of him?” he at length articulated, with a look of half-comical alarm. “I am—just.” “Then the real man’ll get off, and I’ll be hanged in his stead!” he cried, fairly breaking down with terror; “for he’s footing it out fast enough, I tell ye.” “The real man?” I said, thinking to humour him, as I resumed the reins and turned the horse’s head; “and what was he like, pray?” “A clean-shaved, smooth-spoken gentleman—for all the world like a priest or a minister, only that his head’s cropped as close as if he was just new out of jail,” was the prompt answer; “though, by my troth, he looked more like a shockerawn in my old duds when I left him.” I started, and began to think. Then I pulled off my prisoner’s hat, and found his hair not at all close cropped. I drove rapidly back to one of those wayside stations of the county police, and there left my prisoner safely locked up, every question he answered confirming my impression that he had been speaking the truth. The only difficulty I had with him was in getting him to describe the clothes which he had exchanged for the old blacks he wore. These he either could not or would not name—in colour, shape, or material—a difficulty which I only understood when the rags were before me—and then it would have puzzled _me_ to do what I wondered at him not doing. Even a detective can be unreasonable at times. Leaving the Irish-speaking man thus, I turned the horse’s head and made him spin along the road at a fine rate, being not only anxious to overtake the wearer of the “duds,” if he existed, but also to escape a storm of rain which had been threatening for half the day and was then beginning to descend. When I had gone on thus for a few miles, and passed a good many on the road—not one of whom answered the description of my man—I allowed the horse to “breathe” in ascending one of the braes by laying the reins on his neck and letting him take his own pace. In thus moving slowly along, I turned a corner allotted to stone breaking, and there caught sight of a dark object huddled in to shelter from the rain. I was all but past, and had just noticed that the figure was that of a ragged tramp, when the man rose and trotted hurriedly after the gig, saying respectfully— “If you please, sir, would it be asking too much, sir, for you to give me a lift?” I pulled up the horse and scanned him closely, while I appeared to busy myself pulling up my collar to keep out the driving rain. “Well,” I said, in a tone by no means gracious or obliging, “how far are you going?” “I’m not particular, sir,” he answered with alacrity, “as far as you’re going yourself, sir.” “Come up, then.”