and fell thirty feet.  Cut and bleeding, if not broken, he would never have got away but that, fortunately for him, a tradesman’s cart happened to be standing at the servants’ entrance.  Joe was in it, and off like a flash of greased lightning.  How he managed to escape, with all the country in an uproar, I can’t tell you; but he did it.  The horse and cart, when found sixteen miles off, were neither worth much.

“That, it seems, sobered him down for a bit, and nobody heard any more of him till nine months later, when he walked into the Monico, where I was then working, and held out his hand to me as bold as brass.

“‘It’s all right,’ says he, ‘it’s the hand of an honest man.’

“‘It’s come into your possession very recently then,’ says I.

“He was dressed in a black frock-coat and wore whiskers.  If I hadn’t known him, I should have put him down for a parson out of work.

“He laughs.  ‘I’ll tell you all about it,’ he says.

“‘Not here,’ I answers, ’because I’m too busy; but if you like to meet me this evening, and you’re talking straight—­’

“‘Straight as a bullet,’ says he.  ’Come and have a bit of dinner with me at the Craven; it’s quiet there, and we can talk.  I’ve been looking for you for the last week.’

“Well, I met him; and he told me.  It was the old story:  a gal was at the bottom of it.  He had broken into a small house at Hampstead.  He was on the floor, packing up the silver, when the door opens, and he sees a gal standing there.  She held a candle in one hand and a revolver in the other.

“‘Put your hands up above your head,’ says she.

“‘I looked at the revolver,’ said Joe, telling me; ’it was about eighteen inches off my nose; and then I looked at the gal.  There’s lots of ’em will threaten to blow your brains out for you, but you’ve only got to look at ’em to know they won’t.

“’They are thinking of the coroner’s inquest, and wondering how the judge will sum up.  She met my eyes, and I held up my hands.  If I hadn’t I wouldn’t have been here.

“‘Now you go in front,’ says she to Joe, and he went.  She laid her candle down in the hall and unbolted the front door.

“‘What are you going to do?’ says Joe, ’call the police?  Because if so, my dear, I’ll take my chance of that revolver being loaded and of your pulling the trigger in time.  It will be a more dignified ending.’

“‘No,’ says she, ’I had a brother that got seven years for forgery.  I don’t want to think of another face like his when he came out.  I’m going to see you outside my master’s house, and that’s all I care about.’

“She went down the garden-path with him, and opened the gate.

“‘You turn round,’ says she, ’before you reach the bottom of the lane and I give the alarm.’  And Joe went straight, and didn’t look behind him.

“Well, it was a rum beginning to a courtship, but the end was rummer.  The girl was willing to marry him if he would turn honest.  Joe wanted to turn honest, but didn’t know how.