d not
be touched as long as we were looking after you. Tring and I, if we had
been asked, would have said that we could each have taken on a dozen
foreigners easily. Mr. Chetwynd is handy with his fists too, though he
hasn't your weight and reach, and your two other friends are both pretty
well accustomed to deal with rough customers. As for Tring and me, it
makes one feel small to know that we have been bested by a handful of
niggers, or Hindoos, or whatever the chaps are, whom a good sized boy of
twelve ought to be able to polish off."

"Now, Mark, what is to be done next?" Dick Chetwynd asked.

"The next thing will be to get back as soon as we can, Dick. I, for one,
have had enough of Holland to last me for a lifetime."

"I am afraid, gentlemen," the Lieutenant said, "you will have to wait
a day or two before you can leave. I have nineteen men in prison, and
there will be a meeting of magistrates this afternoon. Now you have come
back, Mr. Thorndyke, the charge against them won't be as serious as
it would have been before, but they are guilty of a desperate and
premeditated assault upon six passengers on their arrival here; they
have already admitted that they were paid for their work; and as among
them are some of the worst characters in the city, you may be sure that
now we have got them fairly in our hands we shall not let them go. It is
so simple an affair that the investigation ought not to take long, but
we shall want to find out, if we can, who acted as the intermediary
between the Hindoos and the prisoners. I should think that two meetings
ought to be sufficient for the present, but I am afraid that there may
then be a long remand, and that you will either have to remain here or
to come over again."

"It would be a horrible nuisance," Dick said; "still it would be better
to come back again than to wait here indefinitely, and anyhow I don't
suppose it would be necessary for all of us to come back again."

"I should not mind if it could be arranged for me to be here again in a
month's time," Mark agreed, "for, to tell you the truth, I am going to
be married in less than three weeks, and as I had intended to come to
Brussels, and afterwards to travel for a while, I could make a visit
here without greatly putting myself out."

"I will try and arrange that, Mr. Thorndyke."

"I shall be glad," Mark said, "if you can manage to get the men
sentenced without going into the question of the diamonds at all, and