if only to cool his temper.  It would have pleased us to stay and fight the matter out, but we had a friend meeting us at Buxton to accompany us on the last day’s march home, and were obliged to give in on that account; so we opened the bag, and it was amusing to see the crestfallen appearance of the officer when he saw the contents, and his fiery temperature almost fell below zero when we told him we should report the matter to his chief.  We heard in the town that some of the squires on that side of Nottingham had been troubled with poachers on their estates, and the police had orders to examine all persons with suspicious-looking parcels coming into the town by that road, whether by vehicles or on foot.  About a fortnight before our adventure the same policeman had stopped a man who was carrying a similar bag to mine, and found in it a complete set of housebreaker’s tools.  He had been complimented by the magistrates for his smart capture, so possibly our reluctance to open the bag, and its similarity to that carried by the housebreaker, had confirmed him in his opinion that he was about to make a similar capture.  Another thought, however, that occurred to me was that the man I was walking with might be “known to the police,” as I noticed he disappeared in the crowd immediately the officer approached.  But be that as it may, we wrote to the Chief Constable of Police at Nottingham soon after we reached home, who replied very civilly, and said he hoped we would not proceed with the case further, as just then the police in that neighbourhood had very difficult duties to perform, and so the matter ended.

[Illustration:  MERTON GARDENS.]

But to return to Oxford.  My brother only smiled at my fears, and remarked that being apprehended by the police would only be a small matter compared with being taken to prison and put on the treadmill, a position in which he boasted of having once been placed.  When he happened to mention this to a tramp on the road, I was greatly amused to hear the tramp in a significant and confidential tone of voice quietly ask, “What was you in for?”

He was only a small boy at the time, and had gone with our father, who was on the jury, to the county prison.  Part of the jury’s business in the interval was to inspect the arrangements there, which of course were found in applepie order.  My brother was greatly impressed by his own importance when the man in livery at the head of the procession repeatedly called to the crowd, “Make way for the Grand Jury!” He saw the prisoners picking “oakum,” or untwisting old ropes that had been used in boats, tearing the strands into loose hemp to be afterwards used in caulking the seams between the wood planks on the decks and sides of ships, so as to make them water-tight; and as it was near the prisoners’ dinner-time, he saw the food that had been prepared for their dinner in a great number of small tin cans with handles attached, each containing two or three small pieces of cooked meat, which he said smelled very savoury.