"Unavoidably detained till Thursday morning.--SCHMIDT." This was _after_ the arrival of a wire from home in answer to mine. By Thursday morning I had had time to receive a letter from Herr Wilhelm, and to secure the services of a certain noted detective, accompanied by whom I presented myself at the appointed hour at 909. But my companion's services were not required. The birds had flown, warned by the same traitor in our camp through whom the first hints of the new patent had leaked out. With him it was easy to deal, poor wretch! but the clever rogues who had employed him and personated the members of the honourable firm of Bluestone & Fagg were never traced. The negotiation was successfully carried out. The experience I had gone through left me a wiser man. It is to be hoped, too, that the owners of 909 Blackfriars Street were more cautious in the future as to whom they let their premises to when temporarily vacant. The re-painting of the doorway, etc., at the tenant's own expense had already roused some slight suspicion. It is needless to add that Nos. 7 and 13 had been duly received on the second-floor. I have never known the true history of that extraordinary night. Was it all a dream, or a prophetic vision of warning? Or was it in any sense true? _Had_ I, in some inexplicable way, left my own town earlier than I intended, and really travelled in a slow train? Or had the man with a cough, for his own nefarious purposes, mesmerised or hypnotised me, and to some extent succeeded? I cannot say. Sometimes, even, I ask myself if I am quite sure that there ever was such a person as "the man with the cough"! "HALF-WAY BETWEEN THE STILES." (A RIGHT-OF-WAY INCIDENT.) By the road, Scarby village is good three miles from Colletwood, the nearest town and railway station. But there is a short cut over the hills for foot passengers. _Over_ the hills they call it, but _between_ the hills would be more correct, for there is a sort of tableland once you have climbed a short, steep bit up from the town, which extends nearly to Scarby, sloping gradually down to the village. And on each side of this tableland the hills rise again, north and south, much higher to the north than to the south. So this flat stretch, though at some considerable height, is neither bleak nor exposed, being sheltered on the colder side, and fairly open to the sunshine south and west. It is a pleasant place, and so it must have been considered in the old days; for a large monastery stood there once, of which the ruins are still to be seen, and of which the memory is still preserved in the name--"Monksholdings".