The moment this information was tendered I regretted my compact. What though I sent Dick to Mr Bannister, and the money were cheerfully paid, if the arrest and imprisonment of the gentleman himself on a charge of bigamy followed? The very execution of my duty would then look, in the eyes of those most interested, an act of the deepest treachery. There was no going back, however, and I could only hope that Dick had been misled or mistaken. The same afternoon Dick appeared at the office, and gave minute details of a daring forgery case in which Peter Hart had been engaged years before. The facts were so striking that we were for a time doubtful of their reality, and telegraphed south for information. The answer put at rest every doubt. Two men had been tried and convicted in connection with the affair, but they were mere tools, and the principal had escaped. That man was said to be Peter Hart, changed only in name; and an officer able to identify the real culprit was on his way to Edinburgh when the reply had been despatched. So far Dick’s information seemed valuable and accurate, and with the greatest alacrity and delight I went for Peter Hart, whom I found sitting at his ease in his inn—the same public-house in which the former arrest had taken place. He returned my salutation rather sternly and haughtily, and resumed his game with the air of a man who was certain to be the last to be “wanted” by me. “I’m waiting on _you_, Peter,” I at length pointedly remarked. “Oh, you are, are you?” he snappishly and defiantly answered, jumping up with the greatest readiness. “Perhaps you’ll take me to the office and lock me up as you did before, and risk me bringing an action of damages against you and the rest of ’em? Perhaps you’ll be kind enough to call in a policeman to hit me over the head and arms like as he did the last time, eh?” and after this scathing and satirical outburst he paused for breath, to pose grandly before his friends, thinking doubtless that he had quite cowed and overawed me. “There is a man at the door,” I quietly answered, bringing out my bracelets, “but he won’t need to hit you over the head unless you act as foolishly as you did the last time. You’re not afraid of these!” “Afraid of them? Not me. I want them on—I want them on badly. See, I’ll put them on myself. Now take me away, and abuse me, and lock me up, and then take the consequences!”