None but an expert thief could have done the thing so swiftly. The moment the box was in his possession the thief caught sight of me making a dash towards him, and turned and flew towards the end of the street by which he had entered. He flew so fast that his feet seemed scarcely to touch the ground. M^cSweeny had emerged from his hiding-place at the first outcry, and appeared directly in front of the flying man with his great, strong arms extended for a bear’s hug; but the flying man, unable to check his pace, yet unwilling to be taken, merely raised the tin box of tokens and dashed it full in M^cSweeny’s face, flattening my chum’s little nose with his face, and laying him on his back on the snowy pavement as neatly as if he had been tugged back by the hair. I paid no attention to M^cSweeny, but flew on in the wake of the thief; but when I turned the corner of the street into Broughton he had vanished, I knew not in what direction. I turned back, after a run up the brae, and found M^cSweeny sitting up on the pavement and tenderly feeling the place where his nose had been. “Oh, you thickhead!” was my only remark, as I passed on to speak to the robbed man. “Thick, is it?” he dolefully returned. “Faix, it’s a great deal thinner than it was a minit ago.” “And you let him off, money and all,” I added, in deep disgust. “Begorra, if you’d felt the weight of the money, like me, you’d wish it far enough away,” he returned, busy with his handkerchief; “a steam hammer’s nothing to it.” “I am happy to say that there was no money in the box,” said the robbed man, who was little the worse of his fall. “Nothing but a number of metal tokens used as checks at the theatre.” “Tokens?” groaned M^cSweeny, clenching his fists. “I’d like to give him some more.” A few words of explanation followed, which considerably relieved my concern over the loss of the thief; and then the robbed man accompanied us to the Central to report the case, and get a look at the handwriting of the note sent us in warning. He readily recognised the note-paper as of a kind used in the theatre, but could make nothing of the handwriting. However, the fact that the warning had come from some one employed in the theatre was a clue of a kind, and with the promise to give us every help in following it out, he took leave.