rates, you know, and sent to
prison. I shall take you to the police-station. There the constable will
find means to make you confess."

Beyond provoking a fresh paroxysm of kicking, these adjurations were
without result. His captives appeared equally impervious to shame,
contrition or alarm. They remained obstinately mute. Whereupon it began
to dawn upon their captor that his position risked becoming not a little
invidious, since the practical difficulty of carrying his threats into
execution was so great. How could he haul two sturdy, active children,
plus a sack still containing a goodly quantity of garden produce, some
quarter of a mile without help? To let them go, on the other hand, was
to have them incontinently vanish into those trailing whitish vapours
creeping over the face of the landscape. And, once vanished, they were
lost to him, since he knew neither their names nor dwelling place; and
could, with no certainty, identify them, having seen them only in the
act of struggle and in this uncertain evening light. He felt himself
very nastily planted on the horns of a dilemma, when on a sudden there
arrived help.

A vehicle of some description turned out of the main road and headed
down the lane.

Laocooen-like, flanked on either hand by a writhing youthful figure,
Reginald Sawyer called aloud:

"Hi!--Stop, there--pray, stop."

Darcy Faircloth lighted down out of a ramshackle Marychurch station fly,
and advanced towards the rather incomprehensible group.

"What's happened? What's the matter?" he said. "What on earth do you want
with those two youngsters?"

"I want to convey them to the proper authorities," Sawyer answered, with
all the self-importance he could muster. He found his interlocutor's
somewhat abrupt and lordly manner at once annoying and impressive, as
were his commanding height and rather ruffling gait. "These boys have
been engaged in robbing a garden. I caught them in the act, and it is my
duty to see that they pay the penalty of their breach of the law. I count
on your assistance in taking them to the police-station."

"You want to give them in charge?"

"What else?--The moral tone of this parish is, I grieve to say,
very low."

Sawyer talked loud and fast in the effort to assert himself.

"Low and coarse," he repeated. "Both as a warning to others, and in
the interests of their own future, an example must be made of these
two lads."

"Must it?" Faircloth said, towering above him in