ction. It was not a
comfortable reflection, not did it add to my comfort that among the
passengers who crowded into my carriage, and helped to keep out my view
of the booking-office door, was the gloomy, detective-looking individual
whose demeanour had so disconcerted me during the first stage of this
disastrous journey.

He eyed me as suspiciously as ever from behind his everlasting
newspaper, and under his scrutiny I hardly dared persevere in my own
look-out. I made a pretext of buying a newspaper in order to keep near
the door. To my dismay the whistle suddenly sounded as I was counting
my change, and the train began to move off. At the same moment a
figure, carrying in one hand a portmanteau and in the other a hat-box,
rushed frantically into the station, and made a blind clash at the very
door where I stood. I shrunk back in a panic to my distant corner, with
my heart literally in my mouth. There was a brief struggle on the
doorstep; the hat-box flew in, and the door was actually opened to admit
the owner, when a couple of porters laid violent hands upon him and
dragged him off the train.

It was not I who had been left behind this time, but Michael McCrane;
and while he and his portmanteau remained disconsolate in Belfast, I and
his hat-box were being whirled in the direction of Londonderry in the
company of a person who, whatever he may have thought of McCrane,
without doubt considered me a fugitive!

It was a trying position, and I was as much at sea as I had been during
the agitated hours of the terrible night, I tried to appear calm, and
took refuge behind my newspaper in order to collect my ideas and
interpose a screen between myself and the critical stare of my fellow-
passenger. Alas! it was avoiding Scylla only to fall into Charybdis.
The first words which met my eyes were:--

"Bank Robbery in London.--

"A robbery was perpetrated in ---'s bank on Wednesday night, under
circumstances which point to one of the cashiers as the culprit. The
manager's box, containing a considerable amount of loose cash, was found
broken open, and it is supposed the thief has also made away with a
considerable sum in notes and securities. The cashier in question has
disappeared and is supposed to have absconded to the north. He is dark
complexioned, pale, mysterious in his manners, and aged 26. When last
seen wore a tall hat, gloves, and a grey office suit."

Instinctively I pulled off my gloves and deposited