If the Government was particularly annoyed at the rejection of a Bill, they would send it up again, and, to avoid any further fuss, the peers would usually fall back upon a fourth formula, which provided for this contingency. This was: "Settle it for yourselves"; and it meant that the Bill would go to the House of Lords Committee again in the usual way, and would be passed. The system worked well on the whole, and it had never happened that a Bill had gone more than three times to the whole body of peers. They always broke down on the third canvass, even if it was on a question that affected themselves adversely. They could not stand the nuisance of being continually interrupted and annoyed; and many of them turned against their own party for the sake of getting it all over, and being allowed to settle down quietly again. CHAPTER XXXII My last day in Upsidonia had arrived, and the time was fast approaching when I was about to rob that country of its brightest jewel. Towards the evening, feeling restless, I set out for a walk. Miriam was with her mother, and as there was no one else whose company I desired at that time I went alone. I thought I might as well see exactly how long it would take to walk to the other side of Culbut so as to run no risk of meeting many people when I should take the same road with Miriam, very early the next morning. When I got into the busier part of Culbut, I bought an evening paper, and running my eye idly over its columns, came upon one headed: "The Truth about John Howard at Last. Arrest Shortly Expected. New Peer Victimised." I took refuge upon the top of a tram-car, and read the column through. It stated that the Master of McGillicuddy, the son of the respected Highland Baron of that ilk, had been brought to the office of the paper by another highly respected nobleman--in whom I had no difficulty in recognising Lord Potter--and had authorised them to announce, for the protection of all honest people, that there was a dangerous criminal in their midst, whom they would do well to beware of. A prisoner undergoing a term of penal servitude for representing himself as a professor of dead languages, and practising a long series of cruel frauds on young students, many of whom had lost places in the monthly examinations owing to his empirical methods of tuition, had escaped from gaol some weeks before. He was known to have gone south, no doubt with the idea of practising the same frauds on the less sophisticated scholars of Upsidonia. There was no doubt whatever that the person already arrested on his arrival in Culbut for a gross insult to a highly respected personage was this escaped prisoner, masquerading under another name. The police, who had hitherto failed to trace the escaped convict, had been notified, and, by the time these words were in print, would no doubt have got him once more safely under lock and key.