e from the pocket of his
fur coat, "is, as you see, Dr Escott of Clankwood."

Meanwhile Moggridge, after hurriedly investigating the platform he was on,
suddenly spied a tall fur-coated figure on the opposite side. Without a
moment's hesitation he sprang on to the rails, and had just mounted the
other side as the station-master and two porters appeared.

Seeing his allies by his side Mr Beveridge never said a word, but,
throwing off his hat, he lowered his head, charged his keeper, and picking
him up by the knees threw him heavily on his back. Before he had a chance
of recovering himself the other three were seated on his chest employed in
winding a coil of rope round and round his prostrate form.

Two minutes later Moggridge was sitting bound hand and foot in the booking
office, addressing an amused audience in a strain of perhaps excusable
exasperation, which however merely served to impress the Ashditch
officials with a growing sense of their address in capturing so dangerous
a lunatic. In the middle of this entertaining scene the London express
steamed in, and Mr Beveridge, courteously thanking the station-master for
his assistance, stepped into a first-class carriage.

"I should be much obliged," he said, leaning on the door of his
compartment and blowing the smoke of Dr Escott's last Havannah lightly
from his lips, "if you would be kind enough to keep that poor fellow in
the station till to-morrow. It is rather too late to send him back now.
Good night, and many thanks."

He pressed a coin into the station-master's hand, which that disappointed
official only discovered on emptying his pockets at night to be an
ordinary sixpence, the guard whistled, and one by one, smoothly and slowly
and then in a bright stream, the station lamps slipped by. The last of
them flitted into the night, and the train swung and rattled by a mile a
minute nearer to London town and farther from the high stone wall. There
was no other stop, and for a long hour the adventurer sat with his legs
luxuriously stretched along the cushions looking out into a fainter
duplicate of his carriage, pierced now and then by the glitter of brighter
points as they whisked by some wayside village, or crossed by the black
shadows of trees. The whole time he smiled contentedly, doubtless at the
prospect of his parish work. All at once he seemed stirred, and, turning
in his seat, laid his face upon the window, and pulled down the blind
behind his head, so