ut his pockets, every one of the nine which enriched his
suit. And every pocket was empty.

"Well!" said the inspector.

"I don't know how they done it--artful little beggars! They walked in
front of me the 'ole way, so as for me to keep my eye on them and not to
attract a crowd and obstruct the traffic."

"It's very remarkable," said the inspector, frowning.

"If you've done a-browbeating of the innocent children," said Martha,
"I'll hire a private carriage and we'll drive home to their papa's
mansion. You'll hear about this again, young man!--I told you they
hadn't got any gold, when you were pretending to see it in their poor
helpless hands. It's early in the day for a constable on duty not to be
able to trust his own eyes. As to the other one, the less said the
better; he keeps the Saracen's Head, and he knows best what his liquor's
like."

[Illustration: He said, "Now then!" to the policeman and Mr. Peasemarsh]

"Take them away, for goodness' sake," said the inspector crossly. But as
they left the police-station he said, "Now then!" to the policeman and
Mr. Peasemarsh, and he said it twenty times as crossly as he had spoken
to Martha.

* * * * *

Martha was as good as her word. She took them home in a very grand
carriage, because the carrier's cart was gone, and, though she had stood
by them so nobly with the police, she was so angry with them as soon as
they were alone for "trapesing into Rochester by themselves," that none
of them dared to mention the old man with the pony-cart from the
village who was waiting for them in Rochester. And so, after one day of
boundless wealth, the children found themselves sent to bed in deep
disgrace, and only enriched by two pairs of cotton gloves, dirty inside
because of the state of the hands they had been put on to cover, an
imitation crocodile-skin purse, and twelve penny buns, long since
digested.

The thing that troubled them most was the fear that the old gentleman's
guinea might have disappeared at sunset with all the rest, so they went
down to the village next day to apologise for not meeting him in
Rochester, and to _see_. They found him very friendly. The guinea had
not disappeared, and he had bored a hole in it and hung it on his
watch-chain. As for the guinea the baker took, the children felt they
_could_ not care whether it had vanished or not, which was not perhaps
very honest, but on the other hand was not wholly unnatural