ture in the low-necked shirt followed his
example with a bird-like screech, and the stranger (finding the rest of
his prey escape him) pounced with a rude grasp on Morris himself, that
gentleman's frame of mind might be very nearly expressed in the
colloquial phrase: "I told you so!"

"I have one of the gang," said Gideon Forsyth.

"I do not understand," said Morris dully.

"O, I will make you understand," returned Gideon grimly.

"You will be a good friend to me if you can make me understand
anything," cried Morris, with a sudden energy of conviction.

"I don't know you personally, do I?" continued Gideon, examining his
unresisting prisoner. "Never mind, I know your friends. They are your
friends, are they not?"

"I do not understand you," said Morris.

"You had possibly something to do with a piano?" suggested Gideon.

"A piano!" cried Morris, convulsively clasping Gideon by the arm. "Then
you're the other man! Where is it? Where is the body? And did you cash
the draft?"

"Where is the body? This is very strange," mused Gideon. "Do you want
the body?"

"Want it?" cried Morris. "My whole fortune depends upon it! I lost it.
Where is it? Take me to it!"

"O, you want it, do you? And the other man, Dickson--does he want it?"
inquired Gideon.

"Who do you mean by Dickson? O, Michael Finsbury! Why, of course he
does! He lost it too. If he had it, he'd have won the tontine
to-morrow."

"Michael Finsbury! Not the solicitor?" cried Gideon.

"Yes, the solicitor," said Morris. "But where is the body?"

"Then that is why he sent the brief! What is Mr. Finsbury's private
address?" asked Gideon.

"233 King's Road. What brief? Where are you going? Where is the body?"
cried Morris, clinging to Gideon's arm.

"I have lost it myself," returned Gideon, and ran out of the station.

CHAPTER XV

THE RETURN OF THE GREAT VANCE

Morris returned from Waterloo in a frame of mind that baffles
description. He was a modest man; he had never conceived an overweening
notion of his own powers; he knew himself unfit to write a book, turn a
table napkin-ring, entertain a Christmas party with legerdemain--grapple
(in short) any of those conspicuous accomplishments that are usually
classed under the head of genius. He knew--he admitted--his parts to be
pedestrian, but he had considered them (until quite lately) fully equal
to the demands of life. And to-day he owned himself defeated: life had
the upper hand; if there ha