ere was Raffles sitting cross-legged on the
floor, and slowly shaking his broken head as he stanched the blood.

"Et tu, Bunny!" he groaned. "Mine own familiar friend!"

"Then you weren't even stunned!" I exclaimed. "Thank God for that!"

"Of course I was stunned," he murmured, "and no thanks to you that I
wasn't brained. Not to know me in the kit you've seen scores of times!
You never looked at me, Bunny; you didn't give me time to open my
mouth. I was going to let you run me in so prettily! We'd have walked
off arm-in-arm; now it's as tight a place as ever we were in, though
you did get rid of old blow-pipes rather nicely. But we shall have the
devil's own run for our money!"

Raffles had picked himself up between his mutterings, and I had
followed him to the door into the garden, where he stood busy with the
key in the dark, having blown out his lantern and handed it to me. But
though I followed Raffles, as my nature must, I was far too embittered
to answer him again. And so it was for some minutes that might
furnish forth a thrilling page, but not a novel one to those who know
their Raffles and put up with me. Suffice it that we left a locked
door behind us, and the key on the garden wall, which was the first of
half a dozen that we scaled before dropping into a lane that led to a
foot-bridge higher up the backwater. And when we paused upon the
foot-bridge, the houses along the bank were still in peace and
darkness.

Knowing _my_ Raffles as I did, I was not surprised when he dived under
one end of this bridge, and came up with his Inverness cape and opera
hat, which he had hidden there on his way to the house. The thick
socks were peeled from his patent-leathers, the ragged trousers
stripped from an evening pair, bloodstains and Newgate fringe removed
at the water's edge, and the whole sepulchre whited in less time than
the thing takes to tell. Nor was that enough for Raffles, but he must
alter me as well, by wearing my overcoat under his cape, and putting
his Zingari scarf about my neck.

"And now," said he, "you may be glad to hear there's a 3:12 from
Surbiton, which we could catch on all fours. If you like we'll go
separately, but I don't think there's the slightest danger now, and
I begin to wonder what's happening to old blow-pipes."

[Illustration: The ragged trousers stripped from an evening pair.]

So, indeed, did I, and with no small concern, until I read of his
adventures (and our own) in the news