himself, in the moment required for indicating accurately the fugitive's
vanishing-point in the plantation:--"He's my man!" Granny Marrable's
pointing finger sent him off in pursuit before either of the others
could ask a question or say a word. Harry, the grandson, wavered a
moment between grandfilial duty and the pleasures of the chase, and
chose the latter, utilising public spirit as an excuse for doing so.

Maisie junior was not going to allow her grandmother to stay to see the
matter out, nor indeed did the old lady feel that her own strength could
bear any further trial. On the way home to the cottage at Dessington she
gave a reserved version of her strange interview, always laying stress
on the insanity she confidently ascribed to her terrifying companion. As
soon as he had died out of the immediate present, she began to find
commiseration for him.

But then, how about the mission of the respectable man, who had, it
appeared, represented himself as a police-officer on the track of an
atrocious criminal, about the charges against whom he had almost kept
silence, merely saying that he was a returned convict, and liable to
arrest on that ground alone, but that he was "wanted" on several
accounts? He had followed his quarry to Grantley Thorpe, arriving by an
early train, to find that a man answering to his description had started
on foot a couple of hours previously, having asked his way to Ancester
Towers. He had followed him there in a hired gig; and, of course, found
the connecting clue at Solmes's cottage, and followed him on to
Dessington, calling at "T. Hancock's Old Truepenny" by the way, and
being guided by T. Hancock's information to run the gig round by the
road and intercept his man at the end of the short cut. The younger
Maisie and her young brother-in-law, coming by in search of her overdue
grandmother, had entered into conversation with him; and he had
accompanied them as far as the other side of the coppice wood, and given
them the particulars of his errand above stated.

It was all very exciting, and rather horrible. But old Phoebe kept back
all her horrors, and even the man's claim to be the son of an old person
who had gone to Strides Cottage. Mrs. Prichard she said never a word of,
much as she longed to tell the whole story. But she was greatly consoled
for this by the succulence of her year-old great-grandson, whose grip,
even during sleep, was so powerful as to elicit a forecast of a
distingu