ink you make very unwarrantable suppositions,"
said Mr. Juxon severely. "I cannot suppose any such thing."

"Many women--ladies too--have done that to save a man from hanging,"
returned Mr. Booley, fixing his grey eye on the squire.

"Hanging?" repeated the latter in surprise. "But Goddard is not to be
hanged."

"Of course he is. What did you expect?" Mr. Booley looked surprised in
his turn.

"But--what for?" asked the squire very anxiously. "He has not killed
anybody--"

"Oh--then you don't know how he escaped?"

"No--I have not the least idea--pray tell me."

"I don't wonder you don't understand me, then," said Mr. Booley. "Well,
it is a short tale but a lively one, as they say. Of course it stands to
reason in the first place that he could not have got out of Portland. He
was taken out for a purpose. You know that after his trial was over, all
sorts of other things besides the forgery came out about him, proving
that he was altogether a very bad lot. Now about three weeks ago there
was a question of identifying a certain person--it was a very long story,
with a bad murder case and all the rest of it--commonplace, you know the
sort--never mind the story, it will all be in the papers before long when
they have got it straight, which is more than I have, seeing that these
affairs do get a little complicated occasionally, you know, as such
things will." Mr. Booley paused. It was evident that his command of the
English tongue was not equal to the strain of constructing a long
sentence.

"This person, whom he was to identify, was the person murdered?" inquired
Mr. Juxon.

"Exactly. It was not the person, but the person's body, so to say.
Somebody who had been connected with the Goddard case was sure that if
Goddard could be got out of prison he could do the identifying all
straight. It did not matter about his being under sentence of hard
labour--it was a private case, and the officer only wanted Goddard's
opinion for his personal satisfaction. So he goes to the governor of
Portland, and finds that Goddard had a very good character in that
institution--he was a little bit of a gay deceiver, you see, and knew how
to fetch the chaps in there and particularly the parson. So he had a good
character. Very good. The governor consents to send him to town for this
private job, under a strong force--that means three policemen--with irons
on his hands. When they reached London they put him in a fourwheeler.
Those things