u shoot him
first, and I don't suppose it ever troubles you afterwards."

"Of course I don't mean that I blame you, Mark; but it does seem
shocking."

"I don't suppose you would think that, Millicent, if a burglar, who had
taken one shot at you and was about to finish you with another, was cut
short in the operation by a shot from my pistol. I believe that your
relief and thankfulness would be so great that the idea that it was a
shocking thing for me to do would not as much as enter your head."

"I wish you had shot the other man as well as the one you did, Mark,"
the Squire said, as he walked with his son down to Reigate to attend the
inquest the next morning on the man he had brought in. Mark looked at
his father in surprise.

"There is no doubt I hit him, father," he said; "but I should not think
that he will be likely to trouble us again."

"I wish I felt quite sure of that. Do you know that I have a strong
suspicion that it was Arthur Bastow?"

Mark had, of course, heard of Bastow's escape, but had attached no great
importance to it. The crime had taken place nearly eight years before,
and although greatly impressed at the time by the ill doings of the man,
the idea that he would ever return and endeavor to avenge himself on
his father for the part he had taken had not occurred to him. Beyond
mentioning his escape, the Squire had never talked to him on the
subject.

"It was he who bade us stand and deliver, and the moment he spoke the
voice seemed familiar to me, and, thinking it over, I have an impression
that it was his. I may be mistaken, for I have had him in my mind ever
since I heard that he had escaped, and may therefore have connected the
voice with him erroneously, and yet I cannot but think that I was right.
You see, there are two or three suspicious circumstances. In the first
place, there was this man down here making inquiries. Knapp went down
early this morning with the innkeeper, and told me before breakfast that
Peters at once recognized the fellow you shot as the man who had made
the inquiries. Now, the natural result of making inquiries would have
been that the two men would the next evening have broken into the house,
thinking that during our absence they would meet with no resistance.
Instead of doing this they waylaid us on the road, which looks as if it
was me they intended to attack, and not the house."

"But how could they have known that it was us, father? It is certainly
singula