nd still there and give me your names--'

But this was an empty threat. Mr Pinsent, though nothing of a
sportsman, did indeed possess a gun, deposited with him years ago as
security against a small loan. But it hung over the office
chimney-piece downstairs, and he could not have loaded it, even if
given the necessary powder and shot. Possibly the boys guessed this.
At any rate, they made no answer.

Possibly, too (for a white nightcap and nightshirt were discernible
in almost pitchy darkness), they saw him strut back from the window
to slip downstairs and surprise them. Mr Pinsent paused only to
insert his feet into a pair of loose slippers, and again, as he
unbolted the back door, to snatch a lantern off its hook. Yet by the
time he ran out upon the garden the depredators had made good their
escape.

He groped inside the lantern for the tinder-box, which lay within,
handy for emergencies; found it, and kneeling on the grass-plot
beside the mast, struck flint upon steel. As he blew upon the tinder
and the faint glow lit up his face and nightcap, a timorous
exclamation quavered down from one of the upper windows.

'Oh, sir! Wha--whatever is the matter?' It was the voice of Mrs
Salt, the housekeeper.

For a moment Mr Pinsent did not answer. In the act of thrusting the
brimstone match into the lantern his eye had fallen on a white object
lying on the turf and scarcely a yard away--a white fan-tail pigeon,
dead, with a twisted neck. He picked up the bird and stared around
angrily into the darkness.

'Robbery is the matter, ma'am,' he announced, speaking up to the
unseen figure in the window. 'Some young ruffians have been stealing
and killing my pigeons. I caught 'em in the act, and a serious
matter they'll find it.' Here Mr Pinsent raised his voice, in case
any of the criminals should be lurking within earshot. 'I doubt,
ma'am, a case like this will have to go to the assizes.'

'Hadn't you better put something on?' suggested another voice, not
Mrs Salt's, from somewhere on the left.

'Eh?' Mr Pinsent wheeled about and peered into the darkness.
'Is that you, Garraway?'

'It is,' answered Mr Garraway from his bedroom window over the wall.
'Been stealin' your pigeons, have they? Well, I'm sorry; and yet in
a way 'tis a relief to my mind. For, first along, seeing you, out
there, skipping round in your shirt with a lantern, I'd a fear you
had been taken funny in the night!'

'Bless the man!' said