but if you
are going now to try by yourself, why should you not leave the force
altogether?"

"Because, in the first place, I shall get all the information they
obtain, and can send for any assistance that I may require. In the next
place, by showing this little staff with its silver crown, I show that
I am a Bow Street runner, and can obtain information at once from all
sorts of people which I could not get without its aid."

"Well, I won't say anything more against it, Mark. How are you going to
begin?"

"I mean to go the round of all the places near London--say, within ten
miles. I shall stay from a week to a fortnight in each, take a quiet
lodging, give out that I am on the lookout for a small house with a
garden, and get to talk with people of all kinds."

"But I cannot see what you have to inquire for."

"I imagine that Bastow will have taken just the sort of house that I am
inquiring for, and in the course of my questions I may hear of someone
living in just that sort of way--a retired life, not making many
friends, going up to London sometimes, and keeping, perhaps, a deaf old
woman as a servant, or perhaps a deaf old man--someone, you see, who
would not be likely to hear him if he came home in the middle of the
night, or in the early morning. Once I hear of such a man, I should
ascertain his age, and whether generally he agreed in appearance with
what Bastow is likely to be by this time, then get down one of the
constables who was at the trial, and take his opinion on the subject,
after which we should only have to watch the house at night and pounce
upon him as he came back from one of his excursions. That is the broad
outline of my plan. I cannot help thinking that in the long run I shall
be able to trace him, and of course it will make it all the easier if he
takes to stopping coaches or committing murderous burglaries."

"Then I suppose we are not going to see you often, Mark?"

"Well, not so often as you have done, Millicent, for some time, at any
rate. I shall not be more than five or six miles away, and I shall often
ride into town for the evening, and return late with some sort of hope
that I may be stopped on the road again; it would save me a world of
trouble, you see, if he would come to me instead of my having to find
him."

"Which side of London are you going to try first?"

"The south side, certainly; there are a score of places that would be
convenient to him--Dulwich, Clapham, Tootin