t I had been bushed; next morning he brought me the paper to
show me what I had escaped at Yea!"

"Without suspecting anything?"

"Ah!" said Raffles, as he put out the gas; "that's a point on which
I've never made up my mind. The mare and her color was a
coincidence--luckily she was only a bay--and I fancied the condition of
the beast must have told a tale. The doctor's manner was certainly
different. I'm inclined to think he suspected something, though not
the right thing. I wasn't expecting him, and I fear my appearance may
have increased his suspicions."

I asked him why.

"I used to have rather a heavy moustache," said Raffles, "but I lost it
the day after I lost my innocence."

WILFUL MURDER

Of the various robberies in which we were both concerned, it is but the
few, I find, that will bear telling at any length. Not that the others
contained details which even I would hesitate to recount; it is,
rather, the very absence of untoward incident which renders them
useless for my present purpose. In point of fact our plans were so
craftily laid (by Raffles) that the chances of a hitch were invariably
reduced to a minimum before we went to work. We might be disappointed
in the market value of our haul; but it was quite the exception for us
to find ourselves confronted by unforeseen impediments, or involved in
a really dramatic dilemma. There was a sameness even in our spoil;
for, of course, only the most precious stones are worth the trouble we
took and the risks we ran. In short, our most successful escapades
would prove the greatest weariness of all in narrative form; and none
more so than the dull affair of the Ardagh emeralds, some eight or nine
weeks after the Milchester cricket week. The former, however, had a
sequel that I would rather forget than all our burglaries put together.

It was the evening after our return from Ireland, and I was waiting at
my rooms for Raffles, who had gone off as usual to dispose of the
plunder. Raffles had his own method of conducting this very vital
branch of our business, which I was well content to leave entirely in
his hands. He drove the bargains, I believe, in a thin but subtle
disguise of the flashy-seedy order, and always in the Cockney dialect,
of which he had made himself a master. Moreover, he invariably
employed the same "fence," who was ostensibly a money-lender in a small
(but yet notorious) way, and in reality a rascal as remarkable as
Raffles h