o' manslaughter
an' attempted suicide jined."

Barret started up, allowing the servant maid to take his place, and saw
the approaching constable. Visions of detention, publicity, trial,
conviction, condemnation, swam before him.

"A reg'lar Krismas panty-mime for nuffin'!" remarked the ragged girl,
breaking silence for the first time.

Scarcely knowing what he did, Barret leaped towards his bicycle, set it
up, vaulted into the saddle, as he well knew how, and was safely out of
sight in a few seconds.

Yet not altogether safe. A guilty conscience pursued, overtook, and sat
upon him. Shame and confusion overwhelmed him. Up to that date he had
been honourable, upright, straightforward; as far as the world's
estimation went, irreproachable. Now, in his own estimation, he was
mean, false, underhand, sneaking!

But he did not give way to despair. He was a true hero, else we would
not have had anything to write about him. Suddenly he slowed, frowned,
compressed his lips, described a complete circle--in spite of a
furniture van that came in his way--and deliberately went back to the
spot where the accident had occurred; but there was no little lady to be
seen. She had been conveyed away, the policeman was gone, the little
boys were gone, the ragged girl, sweep, postman, and servant maid--all
were gone, "like the baseless fabric of a vision," leaving only new
faces and strangers behind to wonder what accident and thin old lady the
excited youth was asking about--so evanescent are the incidents that
occur; and so busily pre-occupied are the human torrents that rush in
the streets of London!

The youth turned sadly from the spot and continued his journey at a
slower pace. As he went along, the thought that the old lady might have
received internal injuries, and would die, pressed heavily upon him:
Thus, he might actually be a murderer, at the best a man-slaughterer,
without knowing it, and would carry in his bosom a dreadful secret, and
a terrible uncertainty, to the end of his life!

Of course he could go to that great focus of police energy--Scotland
Yard--and give himself up; but on second thoughts he did not quite see
his way to that. However, he would watch the daily papers closely.
That evening, in a frame of mind very different from the mental
condition, in which he had set out on his sixty miles' ride in the
afternoon, John Barret presented himself to his friend and old
schoolfellow, Bob Mabberly.

"Yo