I wanted to get the hateful business over as soon as possible.  I did not care what I paid—­Lilian was worth all the expense!  I said I had no doubt myself as to the real ownership of the animal, but I would give him any sum in reason, and would remove the dog at once.

And so we settled it.  I paid him an extortionate sum, and came away with a duplicate poodle, a canine counterfeit, which I hoped to pass off at Shuturgarden as the long-lost Bingo.

I know it was wrong,—­it even came unpleasantly near dog-stealing,—­but I was a desperate man.  I saw Lilian gradually slipping away from me, I knew that nothing short of this could ever recall her, I was sorely tempted, I had gone far on the same road already; it was the old story of being hung for a sheep.  And so I fell.

Surely some who read this will be generous enough to consider the peculiar state of the case, and mingle a little pity with their contempt.

I was dining in town that evening, and took my purchase home by a late train; his demeanour was grave and intensely respectable; he was not the animal to commit himself by any flagrant indiscretion; he was gentle and tractable too, and in all respects an agreeable contrast in character to the original.  Still, it may have been the after-dinner workings of conscience, but I could not help fancying that I saw a certain look in the creature’s eyes, as if he were aware that he was required to connive at a fraud, and rather resented it.

If he would only be good enough to back me up!  Fortunately, however, he was such a perfect facsimile of the outward Bingo that the risk of detection was really inconsiderable.

When I got him home I put Bingo’s silver collar round his neck, congratulating myself on my forethought in preserving it, and took him in to see my mother.  She accepted him as what he seemed without the slightest misgiving; but this, though it encouraged me to go on, was not decisive—­the spurious poodle would have to encounter the scrutiny of those who knew every tuft on the genuine animal’s body!

Nothing would have induced me to undergo such an ordeal as that of personally restoring him to the Curries.  We gave him supper, and tied him up on the lawn, where he howled dolefully all night and buried bones.

The next morning I wrote a note to Mrs. Currie, expressing my pleasure at being able to restore the lost one, and another to Lilian, containing only the words, “Will you believe now that I am sincere?” Then I tied both round the poodle’s neck, and dropped him over the wall into the colonel’s garden just before I started to catch my train to town.