pulse. The daggers in his eyes probed deeper into those of the boy,
picking his brains, transfixing the secrets of his soul. No master's eye
had ever delved so deep into his life; he felt as though the very worst of
him at school was known in an instant to this dreadful stranger in the
wilds of London. He writhed under the ordeal of that protracted scrutiny.
He tugged to free his imprisoned wrist. His captor was meanwhile fumbling
with a penknife in his unoccupied hand. A blade was slowly opened; the
leather watch-guard was sliced through in a second; the revolver dropped
harmlessly into the dew. The man swooped down and whipped it through the
railings with a snarl of satisfaction.

"And now," said he, releasing Pocket, but standing by with his weapon, "I
suppose you know that, apart from everything else, you had no right to
spend the night in here at all?"

The boy, already suffering from his humiliating exertions, gasped out,
"I'm not the only one!" He had just espied a recumbent figure through the
palings; it was that of a dilapidated creature lying prone, a battered hat
beside him, on the open grass beyond the path. The tall man merely
redoubled his scrutiny of the face in front of, him, without so much as a
glance behind.

"That," said he, "is the sort that staggers in as soon as the gates are
open, and spends the day sleeping itself sober. But you are not that sort
at all, and you have spent the night here contrary to the rules. Who are
you, and what's the matter with you?"

"Asthma," wheezed Pocket, clinging to the palings in dire distress.

"So I thought. Yet you spend your night on the wet grass!"

"I had nowhere else to go."

"Have you come up from the country?"

"To see a doctor about it!" cried Pocket bitterly, and told the whole
truth about himself in a series of stertorous exclamations. It scarcely
lessened the austerity of the eyes that still ran him through and through;
but the hard mouth did relax a little; the lined face looked less deeply
slashed and furrowed, and it was a less inhuman voice that uttered the
next words.

"Well, we must get you out of this, my young fellow! Come to these
chairs."

Pocket crept along the palings towards the chairs by which he had climbed
them. His breathing was pitiful now. The stranger accompanied him on the
other side.

"If I lift one over, and lend you a hand, do you think you can manage it?"

"I did last night."

"Here, then. Wait a bi