ou?"

The white-whiskered gentleman seemed a little flustered at this
downright inquiry, but the other was more equal to the occasion. "Do you
hear that, Johnny, my boy," he said, to Paul (whom they had managed
during the journey to brush and scrape into something approaching
respectability), "they want to know if you belong to me. I suppose
you'll allow a son to belong to his father to a certain extent, eh?" he
asked the inspector.

The man apologised for what he conceived to be a mistake. "We've orders
to look out for a young gent about the size of yours, sir," he
explained; "no offence meant, I'm sure," and he went away satisfied.

A very few minutes more and the train rolled in to the terminus, under
the same wide arch beneath which Paul had stood, helpless and
bewildered, a week ago.

"Now my advice to you, young man," said Mr. Goldicutt, as he put Paul
into a cab, and pressed half-a-sovereign into his unwilling hand, "is to
go straight home to Papa and tell him all about it. I daresay he won't
be very hard on you--here's my card, refer him to me if you like.
Good-night, my boy, good-night, and good luck to you. Gad, the best joke
I've had for years!"

And the cab rolled away, leaving them standing chuckling on the
platform, and, as Paul found himself plunging once more into the welcome
roar and rattle of London streets, he forgot the difficulties and
dangers that might yet lie before him in the thought that at last he was
beyond the frontier, and, for the first time since he had slipped
through the playground gate, he breathed freely.

17. _A Perfidious Ally_

"But homeward--home--what home? had he a home?
His home--he walk'd;
Then down the long street having slowly stolen,
His heart foreshadowing all calamity,
His eyes upon the stones, he reached his home."

Paul had been careful, whilst in the hearing of his friends, to give the
cabman a fictitious address, but as soon as he reached the Euston Road,
he stopped the man and ordered him to put him down at the church near
the south end of Westbourne Terrace, for he dared not drive up openly to
his own door.

At last he found himself standing safely on the pavement, looking down
the long line of yellow lamps of his own terrace, only a few hundred
yards from home.

But though his purpose was now within easy reach, his spirits were far
from high; his anxiety had returned with tenfold power; he felt no
eagerness or exultat