'm down.
There's no such * * * hurry." Nevertheless, the eyes of both officers
are keen upon him as he descends the ladder under sufferance.

On the floor below, beside the bed he lay on through so many weary
years, lies Miss Julia's old father, stunned or dead. Her own
insensibility has passed, but has left her in bewilderment, dizzy and
confused, as she kneels over him and tries for a sign of life in vain.
At the ladder-foot the officers have fitted their prisoner with
handcuffs; and then Cardwell, leaving him, goes to lift the old man back
to his couch. But first he calls from the window:--"Got him all right!
Fetch the nearest doctor."

Through the short interval between this and Daverill's removal, words
came from him which may bring the story home or explain it if events
have not done so already. "The old * * * has got his allowance. _He_
won't ask for no more. Who was he, to be meddling? You was old enough in
all conscience, July-ar!" His pronunciation of her name has a hint of a
sneer in it--a sneer at the woman he victimised, some time in the
interval between his desertion of his wife and his final error of
judgment--dabbling in burglary. She might have been spared insult; for
whatever her other faults were, want of affection for her betrayer was
not among them, or she would not have run the risks of concealing him
from the police.

Her paralytic father's sudden reanimation under stress of excitement
was, of course, an exceptionally well-marked instance of a phenomenon
well enough known to pathologists. It had come within his power to
avenge the wrong done to his daughter, and never forgiven by him.
Whether the officers would have broken down the door, if he had not
seized his opportunity, may be uncertain, but there can be no doubt that
the operative cause of Daverill's capture was his recovery of vital
force under the stimulus of excitement at the amazing chance offered him
of bringing it about.

The affair made so little noise that only a very few Sunday loiterers
witnessed what was visible of it in the lane, which was indeed little
more than the unusual presence of two policemen. Then, after a surgeon
had been found and had attended to the injured man, it leaked out that a
malefactor had been apprehended at The Pigeons and taken away in the
police-boat to the Station lower down the river.

That singular couple, Michael Ragstroar and his great-aunt, had got to
the cherry-tart before a passing neighbour,