thoughts, pulled up and backed into. At last, as we ran through
one of these places I fancied I detected in the gloaming the name C--
painted up.

"Is that C--?" I asked of a fellow-traveller.

"It is so! You should have gone in the back of the train if you wanted
to stop there."

Missed again! I grew desperate. The train was crawling along at a
foot's pace; my fellow-traveller was not a formidable one. I opened the
door and jumped out on to the line.

I was uninjured, and C-- was not a mile away. If I ran I might still be
there to meet the back of the train and Michael McCrane.

But as I began to run a grating sound behind me warned me that the train
had suddenly pulled up, and a shout proclaimed that I was being pursued.

Half a dozen passengers and the guard--none of them pressed for time--
joined in the hue and cry.

What it was all about I cannot imagine; all I know is that that evening,
in the meadows near C--, a wretched Cockney, in a battered chimney-pot
hat, and carrying an umbrella, was wantonly run to earth by a handful of
natives, and that an hour later the same unhappy person was clapped in
the village lock-up for the night as a suspicious character! It had all
been tending to this. Fate had marked me for her own, and run me down
at last. Perhaps I _was_ a criminal after all, and did not know it. At
any rate, I was too fatigued to care much what happened. I "reserved my
defence," as they say in the police courts, and resigned myself to spend
the night as comfortably as possible in the comparative seclusion of a
small apartment which, whatever may have been its defects, compared most
favourably with the cabin in which I had lain the night before.

It was about ten o'clock next morning before I had an opportunity of
talking my case over with the inspector, and suggesting to him he had
better let me go. He, good fellow, at once fell in with my wishes,
after hearing my statement, and in his anxiety to efface any unpleasant
impressions, I suppose, proposed an adjournment to the "Hotel" to drink
"siccess to the ould counthree."

The proposed toast was not sufficiently relevant to the business I had
on hand to allure me, so I made my excuses and hastened to the telegraph
office to ascertain whether they had any message for me there.

They had. It was from my manager, as I expected; but the contents were
astounding--

"Return at once. Robber captured here. Keep down expenses."

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