ple to go abroad. It was a question of money, not dread of
discovery and arrest; they had covered their tracks well, and they
believed that no suspicion could fall upon them. They were not prepared
for the ill-luck that awaited them on the Continent. Their fruit of hope
turned to ashes of despair, or very nearly so. They realized but a
fraction of the sum they had expected, and Hawker lost his share of even
that through the treachery of his pal, who departed by night from the
German town where they were stopping. So Hawker started for home, and
he had landed at Dover with, two sovereigns and a few silver coins. He
still believed that the police were ignorant of the business that had
taken him abroad; the worst that he feared was getting into trouble for
failing to report himself.

"There isn't much danger if I'm sharp," he thought, as the Kentish
landscape, the Garden of England, sped by him in the gathering dusk;
"and I won't touch a crib of any sort till I've tried those other two
lays. It's more than doubtful about the papers--I forget what was in
them. And they may be gone by this time. But, leaving that out, I've got
a pretty sure thing up my sleeve. What happened in Germany put me on the
track--but for that I wouldn't have suspected. I'll make somebody fork
over to a stiff tune, and serve him d---- right. It's the first time I
was caught napping."

The endless chimney-pots and glowing lights of the great city gladdened
Hawker's heart, and a whiff from the murky Thames bade him welcome home.
He gave up his ticket at Grosvenor road, and when the train pulled into
Victoria he walked boldly through the immense station. He loved London
with a thoroughbred cockney's passion, and he exulted in the sights and
sounds around him.

Hawker spent his last coppers for a packet of tobacco, and broke one of
his sovereigns to get a drink. He speedily lost himself in the crowds of
Victoria street, satisfied that he had not been recognized or followed.
He went on foot to Charing Cross, and climbed to the top of a brown and
yellow bus. Three-quarters of an hour later he got off in Kentish Town
and made his way to a squalid and narrow thoroughfare in the vicinity of
Peckwater street. He stopped before a house in the middle of a dirty and
monotonous row, and looked at it reminiscently. He had lodged there five
years back, previous to his third conviction, and here he had been
arrested. He had not returned since, for on his release fr