had driven into its wooden head for the purpose of making
it behave better; the chip that Junkie had taken off the end of its nose
when he tried to convert that feature into a Roman; the deep line drawn
round the head close to the hair by Junkie, when, as the chief of the
Micmac Indians, he attempted to scalp it; and the hole through the right
eye, by which Junkie proposed to let a little more light into its black
brain.

Having seen and commented on all these things, Barret retired to the
smoking-room, not to smoke, but to consult a bundle of newspapers which
the post had brought to the house that day.

For it must not be imagined that the interests and amusements by which
he was surrounded had laid the ghost of the thin, little old lady whom
he had mur--at least run down--in London. No; wherever he went, and
whatever he did, that old lady, like Nemesis, pursued him. When he
looked down, she lay sprawling--a murdered, at least a manslaughtered,
victim--at his feet. When he looked up, she hung, like the sword of
Damocles, by a single fibre of maiden's hair over his head.

It was of no use that his friend Jackman rallied him on the point.

"My dear fellow," he would say, "don't you see that if you had really
killed her, the thing would have been published far and wide all over
the kingdom, with a minute description, and perhaps a portrait of
yourself on the bicycle, in all the illustrated papers? Even if you had
only injured her severely, they would have made a sensation of it, with
an offer, perhaps, of a hundred pounds for your capture, and a careful
indication of the streets through which you passed when you ran away--"

"Ay, that's what makes the matter so much worse," Barret would reply;
"the unutterable meanness of running away!"

"But you repented of that immediately," Jackman would return in soothing
tones; "and you did your utmost to undo it, though the effort was
futile."

Barret was usually comforted a good deal by the remarks of his friend,
and indeed frequently forgot his trouble, especially when meditating on
botanical subjects with Milly. Still, it remained a fact that he was
haunted by the little old lady, more or less, and had occasional bad
dreams, besides becoming somewhat anxious every time he opened a
newspaper.

While Barret and the skipper were thus taking what the latter called an
easy day of it, their friend Mabberly, with Eddie and Junkie and the
seaman McGregor, had gone over the