ou fifty--and I only ask you to lend me five
for a moment in case those girls--"

Smithers put his hand in his pocket and produced the coins; they were in
a little chamois leather bag. "Don't open the bag," said he, "just shake
it and they'll know there are sovereigns in it by the noise."

"Right," said Jones. "Now go and tell Colonel Hawker that Major Barstowe
says he's a liar."

Smithers went off, butterfly net in hand.

Jones was under no delusion. He reckoned that the garden was always
under surveillance, and that a man getting over a wall would have little
chance of reaching the street, unless he managed to distract the
attention of watchers. He thought it probable that his conversation with
Smithers had been watched, and possibly the handing over of some article
noted.

There was a seat just here, close to the wall. He sat down on it, pulled
his cap over his eyes, and stretched out his legs. Then under the peak
of the cap, he watched Smithers approaching Colonel Hawker, interrupt
him just as he was on the point of making a stroke, and lead him aside.

The effect on the colonel's mind of the interruption to his stroke,
followed by the sudden information that his veracity had been impeached,
was miraculous and sudden as the slap on the side of the face that sent
the butterfly hunter flying. The attack on Barstowe, who seemed to fight
well, the cries, the shouts, the imprecations, the fact that half a
dozen people, inmates and attendants, joined in the confusion as if by
magic, all this was nothing to Jones, nor was the subsidiary fact that
one of the inmates, a quiet mannered clergyman, with a taste for arson,
had taken advantage of the confusion and was patiently and sedulously at
work, firing the thatch of the summer house in six different places,
with a long concealed box of matches.

Jones, on the stroke of the Colonel, had risen from the seat, and with
the aid of a wall-trained plum tree, had reached the top of the wall and
dropped on the other side into a bed of mignonette. It was a hockey day
at the school, and there were no girls in the garden. He ran across it
to the open front gate and reached the road, ran down the road, which
was deserted, and burning in the late afternoon sunshine, reached a side
road and slackened his pace. All the roads were of the same pattern,
broad, respectable, and lined with detached and semi-detached houses set
in gardens, and labelled according to the owner's fancy. Old