The Brandon party walked very fast, and I had scarcely got up with them as they were turning out of Chancery Lane into Fleet Street, when two men, whose vocation no accustomed eye could for an instant mistake, arrested their further progress.  “This lady,” said one of the men, slightly touching Miss Brandon on the shoulder, “is, I believe, Clara Brandon?”

“Yes she is; and what of that, fellow?” demanded the major’s lady with indignant emphasis.

“Not much, ma’am,” replied the sheriff’s officer, “when you are used to it.  It is my unpleasant duty to arrest her for the sum of eighty-seven pounds, indorsed on this writ, issued at the suit of one Susan Hopley.”

“Arrest her!” exclaimed Mrs. Brandon; “why, she is a minor!”

“Minor or major, ma’am, makes very little difference to us.  She can plead that hereafter, you know.  In the meantime, miss, please to step into this coach,” replied the officer, holding the door open.

“But she’s a person of unsound mind,” screamed the lady, as Clara, nothing loath, sprang into the vehicle.

“So are most people that do business with our establishment,” responded the imperturbable official, as he shut and fastened the door.  “Here is my card, sir,” he added, addressing the attorney, who now came up.  “You see where to find the lady, if her friends wish to give bail to the sheriff, or, what is always more satisfactory, pay the debt and costs.”  He then jumped on the box, his follower got up behind, and away drove the coach, leaving the discomfited major and his fiery better-half in a state of the blankest bewilderment!

“Why, what is the meaning of this?” at length gasped Mrs. Brandon, fiercely addressing the attorney, as if he, were a particeps criminis in the affair.

“The meaning, my dear madame, is, that Miss Clara Brandon is arrested for debt, and carried off to a sponging-house; and that unless you pay the money, or file bail, she will tomorrow be lodged in jail,” replied the unmoved man of law.

“Bail! money!  How are we to do either in London, away from home?” demanded the major with, for him, much emotion.

I did not wait to hear more, but, almost suffocated with laughter at the success of Ferret’s audacious ruse, hastened over to the Temple.  I was just leaving chambers for the night—­about ten o’clock I think it must have been—­when Ferret, in exuberant spirits, burst into the room.

“Well, sir, what do you think now of a writ ad sub.?”

“Why, I think, Mr. Ferret,” replied I, looking as serious as I could, “that yours is very sharp practice; that the purpose you have put it to is an abuse of the writ; that the arrest is consequently illegal; and that a judge would, upon motion, quash it with costs.”

“To be sure he would:  who doubts that?  Let him, and welcome!  In the meantime, Clara Brandon is safe beyond the reach of all the judges or chancellors that ever wore horsehair, and that everlasting simpleton of a major and his harridan wife roaming the metropolis like distracted creatures; and that I take to be the real essence of the thing, whatever the big-wigs may decide about the shells!”