e and into the
street, and walked straight into a policeman.

By a common impulse the Genius and his mate ran rapidly away in
different directions, leaving the figure alone with the officer.

He was a fully-ordained sergeant--by name Aloysius O'Grady; a squat,
rosy little Irishman. He hated violent arrests and all that sort of
thing, and had a faculty of persuading drunks and disorderlies and other
fractious persons to "go quietly along wid him," that was little short
of marvellous. Excited revellers, who were being carried by their mates,
struggling violently, would break away to prance gaily along to the
lock-up with the sergeant. Obstinate drunks who had done nothing but lie
on the ground and kick their feet in the air, would get up like birds,
serpent-charmed, to go with him to durance vile.

As soon as he saw the canvasser, and noted his fixed, unearthly stare,
and listened to his hoarse, unnatural voice, the sergeant knew what was
the matter; it was a man in the horrors, a common enough spectacle at
Ninemile. He resolved to decoy him into the lock-up, and accosted him in
a friendly, free-and-easy way.

"Good day t'ye," he said.

"---- most magnificent volume ever published, jewelled in fourteen
holes, working on a ruby roller, and in a glass case," said the
book-canvasser. "The likenesses of the historical personages are
so natural that the book must not be left open on the table, or the
mosquitoes will ruin it by stinging the portraits."

It then dawned on the sergeant that this was no mere case of the
horrors--he was dealing with a book-canvasser.

"Ah, sure," he said, "fwhat's the use uv tryin' to sell books at all, at
all; folks does be peltin' them out into the street, and the nanny-goats
lives on them these times. Oi send the childer out to pick 'em up, and
we have 'em at me place in barrow-loads. Come along wid me now, and
Oi'll make you nice and comfortable for the night," and he laid his hand
on the outstretched palm of the figure.

It was a fatal mistake. He had set in motion the machinery which
operated the figure's left arm, and it moved that limb in towards its
body, and hugged the sergeant to its breast, with a vice-like grip. Then
it started in a faltering and uneven, but dogged, way to walk towards
the river.

"Immortial Saints!" gasped the sergeant, "he's squazin' the livin'
breath out uv me. Lave go now loike a dacent sowl, lave go. And oh,
for the love uv God, don't be shpakin' into m