Then they noticed the pitiable state Mr. Bultitude was in, and he had to give them a fair account of his escape and subsequent adventures, at which even their sympathy could not restrain delighted shouts of laughter--though Paul himself saw little enough in it all to laugh at; they asked his name, which he thought more prudent, for various reasons, to give as "Jones," and other details, which I am afraid he invented as he went on, and altogether they reached Kentish Town in a state of high satisfaction with themselves and their protégé. At Kentish Town there was one more danger to be encountered, for with the ticket collector there appeared one of the station inspectors. "Beg pardon, gentlemen," said the latter, peering curiously in, "but does that young gent in the corner happen to belong to either of you?" The white-whiskered gentleman seemed a little flustered at this downright inquiry, but the other was more equal to the occasion. "Do you hear that, Johnny, my boy," he said, to Paul (whom they had managed during the journey to brush and scrape into something approaching respectability), "they want to know if you belong to me. I suppose you'll allow a son to belong to his father to a certain extent, eh?" he asked the inspector. The man apologised for what he conceived to be a mistake. "We've orders to look out for a young gent about the size of yours, sir," he explained; "no offence meant, I'm sure," and he went away satisfied. A very few minutes more and the train rolled in to the terminus, under the same wide arch beneath which Paul had stood, helpless and bewildered, a week ago. "Now my advice to you, young man," said Mr. Goldicutt, as he put Paul into a cab, and pressed half-a-sovereign into his unwilling hand, "is to go straight home to Papa and tell him all about it. I daresay he won't be very hard on you--here's my card, refer him to me if you like. Good-night, my boy, good-night, and good luck to you. Gad, the best joke I've had for years!" And the cab rolled away, leaving them standing chuckling on the platform, and, as Paul found himself plunging once more into the welcome roar and rattle of London streets, he forgot the difficulties and dangers that might yet lie before him in the thought that at last he was beyond the frontier, and, for the first time since he had slipped through the playground gate, he breathed freely. 17. _A Perfidious Ally_ "But homeward--home--what home? had he a home? His home--he walk'd; Then down the long street having slowly stolen, His heart foreshadowing all calamity, His eyes upon the stones, he reached his home." Paul had been careful, whilst in the hearing of his friends, to give the cabman a fictitious address, but as soon as he reached the Euston Road, he stopped the man and ordered him to put him down at the church near the south end of Westbourne Terrace, for he dared not drive up openly to his own door.