was the bridegroom, and that the man Jay acted the part of father and gave away the bride, I left the church, followed by my man, and joined the other subordinate outside the vestry door.  Some people in my position would now have felt rather crestfallen, and would have begun to think that they had made a very foolish mistake.  Not the faintest misgiving of any kind troubled me.  I did not feel in the slightest degree depreciated in my own estimation.  And even now, after a lapse of three hours, my mind remains, I am happy to say, in the same calm and hopeful condition.

As soon as I and my subordinates were assembled together, outside the church, I intimated my intention of still following the other cab, in spite of what had occurred.  My reason for deciding on this course will appear presently.  The two subordinates appeared to be astonished at my resolution.  One of them had the impertinence to say to me, “If you please, Sir, who is it we are after?  A man who has stolen money, or a man who has stolen a wife?” The other low person encouraged him by laughing.  Both have deserved an official reprimand; and both, I sincerely trust, will be sure to get it.

When the marriage ceremony was over, the three got into their cab; and, once more, our vehicle (neatly hidden round the corner of the church, so that they could not suspect it to be near them) started to follow theirs.  We traced them to the terminus of the South-Western Railway.  The newly married couple took tickets for Richmond,—­paying their fare with a half sovereign, and so depriving me of the pleasure of arresting them, which I should certainly have done, if they had offered a bank-note.  They parted from Mr. Jay, saying, “Remember the address,—­l4, Babylon Terrace.  You dine with us to-morrow week.”  Mr. Jay accepted the invitation, and added, jocosely, that he was going home at once to get off his clean clothes, and to be comfortable and dirty again for the rest of the day.  I have to report that I saw him home safely, and that he is comfortable and dirty again (to use his own disgraceful language) at the present moment.

Here the affair rests, having by this time reached what I may call its first stage.  I know very well what persons of hasty judgments will be inclined to say of my proceedings thus far.  They will assert that I have been deceiving myself, all through, in the most absurd way; they will declare that the suspicious conversations which I have reported referred solely to the difficulties and dangers of successfully carrying out a runaway match; and they will appeal to the scene in the church, as offering undeniable proof of the correctness of their assertions.  So let it be.  I dispute nothing, up to this point.  But I ask a question, out of the depths of my own sagacity as a man of the world, which the bitterest of my enemies will not, I think, find it particularly easy to answer.  Granted the fact of the marriage, what proof does it afford me of the innocence of the three persons concerned