me he's not gone--tell me I'll see him again.'

'Hang it, can't she stick to one thing at a time--the poor woman's half
out of her wits,' said Toole, provoked; 'I'll wager a dozen of claret
there's more on her mind than she's told to anyone.'

Before he could bring her round to the subject again, the doctor was
called down to Lowe; so he took his leave for the present; and after his
talk with the magistrate, he did not care to go up again to poor little
Mrs. Nutter; and Moggy was as white as ashes standing by, for Mr. Lowe
had just made her swear to her little story about the shoes; and Toole
walked home to the village with a heavy heart, and a good deal out of
humour.

Toole knew that a warrant would be issued next day against Nutter. The
case against him was black enough. Still, even supposing he had struck
those trenchant blows over Sturk's head, it did not follow that it was
without provocation or in cold blood. It looked, however, altogether so
unpromising, that he would have been almost relieved to hear that
Nutter's body had been found drowned in the river.

Still there was a chance that he made good his retreat. If he had not
paid his fare in Charon's packet-boat, he might, at least, have crossed
the channel in the _Trevor_ or _Hillsborough_ to Holyhead. Then, deuce
was in it, if he did not make a fair run for it, and earth himself
snugly somewhere. 'Twas lighter work then than now. 'The old saying at
London, among servants,' writes that good-natured theatrical wag, Tate
Wilkinson, 'was, "I wish you were at York!" which the wronged cook has
now changed for, "I wish you were at Jamaica." Scotland was then
imagined by the cockney as a dreary place, distant almost as the West
Indies; _now_'(reader, pray note the marvel) 'an agreeable party may,
with the utmost ease, dine early in the week in Grosvenor Square, and
without discomposure set down at table on Saturday or Sunday in the new
town of Edinburgh!' From which we learn that miracles of celerity were
already accomplishing themselves, and that the existing generation
contemplated their triumphs complacently. But even upon these we have
improved, and nowadays, our whole social organisation is subservient to
detection. Cut your telegraph wires, substitute sail boats for steam,
and your old fair and easy forty-miles-a-day stage-coaches for the train
and the rail, disband your City police and detective organisation, and
make the transit of a letter between London