ared likely to be delivered to him, and then with
a quiet chuckle bore them, as we have seen, into Davis's parlour.

"This is a bad business, Davis," said Sharp, as he slipped a pair of
manacles on his prisoner.

Davis made no reply. He was very pale, but looked defiant. Mrs Davis
sat down on a chair and sobbed.

Leaving them in charge of Blunt, Mr Sharp then paid a visit to all the
men of the place, and ere long succeeded in capturing all who had been
engaged in the recent robberies, with the various proofs of their
guilt--in the shape of cloth, loaves of sugar, fruit, boxes of tea,
etcetera, in their apartments.

It had cost Mr Sharp and his men many weary hours of waiting and
investigation, but their perseverance was at length well rewarded, for
the "nest" was thoroughly "harried;" the men were dismissed and
variously punished, and that portion of the Grand National Trunk Railway
was, for the time, most effectually purified.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

THE DIAMOND RING AND THE RAILWAY CLEARING-HOUSE.

Let us turn now, for a brief space, to Edwin Gurwood. He is seated
before a desk in one of the rooms of that large building in Seymour
Street, Euston Square, London, where a perfect army of clerks--about a
thousand--clear up many of the mysteries, and overcome a number of the
difficulties, incident to the railway traffic of the kingdom.

At the particular time we write of, Edwin was frowning very hard at a
business-book and thinking of Emma Lee. The cause of his frown, no
doubt, was owing to the conflict between duty and inclination that
happened to rage in his bosom just then. His time belonged to the
railways of the United Kingdom; to Emma belonged his heart. The latter
was absent without leave, and the mind, thus basely forsaken, became
distracted, and refused to make good use of time.

That day Edwin met with a coincidence, he made what he believed to be a
discovery, and almost at the same moment received an inquiry as to the
subject of that discovery. While endeavouring, without much success, to
fix his attention on a case of lost-luggage which it was his duty to
investigate, and frowning as we have said, at the business-book, his eye
was suddenly arrested by the name of "Durby."

"Durby!" he muttered. "Surely that name is familiar? Durby! why, yes--
that's the name of Tipps's old nurse."

Reading on, he found that the name of Durby was connected with a diamond
ring.

"Well, now, that _is_ str