e aware of that.'

He spoke all right, not like a labouring man; but it wasn't a
gentleman's voice, and he seemed to end his sentences off short at the
end, as though he had it on the tip of his tongue to say 'Miss' or
'Sir.'

Oswald thought how terrible it must be to be out alone in the rain and
the dark, with the police after you, and no one to be kind to you if you
knocked at their doors.

'You must have had an awful day,' he said.

'I believe you,' said the stranger, cutting himself more bacon. 'Thank
you, miss (he really did say it that time), just half a cup if you don't
mind. I believe you! I never want to have such a day again, I can tell
you. I took one or two little things in the morning, but I wasn't in the
mood or something. You know how it is sometimes.'

'I can fancy it,' said Alice.

'And then the afternoon clouded over. It cleared up at sunset, you
remember, but then it was too late. And then the rain came on. Not half!
My word! I've been in a ditch. Thought my last hour had come, I tell
you. Only got out by the skin of my teeth. Got rid of my whole outfit.
There's a nice thing to happen to a young fellow! Upon my Sam, it's
enough to make a chap swear he'll never take another thing as long as he
lives.'

'I hope you never will,' said Dora earnestly; 'it doesn't pay, you
know.'

'Upon my word, that's nearly true, though I don't know how _you_ know,'
said the stranger, beginning on the cheese and pickles.

'I wish,' Dora was beginning, but Oswald interrupted. He did not think
it was fair to preach at the man.

'So you lost your outfit in the ditch,' he said; 'and how did you get
those clothes?'

He pointed to the steaming gray suit.

'Oh,' replied the stranger, 'the usual way.'

Oswald was too polite to ask what was the usual way of getting a gray
suit to replace a prison outfit. He was afraid the usual way was the way
the four-pound cake had been got.

Alice looked at me helplessly. I knew just how she felt.

Harbouring a criminal when people are 'out after him' gives you a very
chilly feeling in the waistcoat--or, if in pyjamas, in the part that the
plaited cotton cord goes round. By the greatest good luck there were a
few of the extra-strong peppermints left. We had two each, and felt
better.

The girls put the sheets off Oswald's bed on to the bed Miss Sandal used
to sleep in when not in London nursing the shattered bones of her
tract-distributing brother.

'If you will go to be