It was destined that the exciting incidents of that day were even now not at an end.  I had retired early to rest, but it was impossible for me to sleep, for my mind would turn to Boy Jim and to the extraordinary change in his position and prospects.  I was still turning and tossing when I heard the sound of flying hoofs coming down the London Road, and immediately afterwards the grating of wheels as they pulled up in front of the inn.  My window chanced to be open, for it was a fresh spring night, and I heard the creak of the inn door, and a voice asking whether Sir Lothian Hume was within.  At the name I sprang from my bed, and I was in time to see three men, who had alighted from the carriage, file into the lighted hall.  The two horses were left standing, with the glare of the open door falling upon their brown shoulders and patient heads.

Ten minutes may have passed, and then I heard the clatter of many steps, and a knot of men came clustering through the door.

“You need not employ violence,” said a harsh, clear voice.  “On whose suit is it?”

“Several suits, sir.  They ’eld over in the ’opes that you’d pull off the fight this mornin’.  Total amounts is twelve thousand pound.”

“Look here, my man, I have a very important appointment for seven o’clock to-morrow.  I’ll give you fifty pounds if you will leave me until then.”

“Couldn’t do it, sir, really.  It’s more than our places as sheriff’s officers is worth.”

In the yellow glare of the carriage-lamp I saw the baronet look up at our windows, and if hatred could have killed, his eyes would have been as deadly as his pistol.

“I can’t mount the carriage unless you free my hands,” said he.

“’Old ’ard, Bill, for ‘e looks vicious.  Let go o’ one arm at a time!  Ah, would you then?”

“Corcoran!  Corcoran!” screamed a voice, and I saw a plunge, a struggle, and one frantic figure breaking its way from the rest.  Then came a heavy blow, and down he fell in the middle of the moonlit road, flapping and jumping among the dust like a trout new landed.

“He’s napped it this time!  Get ’im by the wrists, Jim!  Now, all together!”

He was hoisted up like a bag of flour, and fell with a brutal thud into the bottom of the carriage.  The three men sprang in after him, a whip whistled in the darkness, and I had seen the last that I or any one else, save some charitable visitor to a debtors’ gaol, was ever again destined to see of Sir Lothian Hume, the once fashionable Corinthian.

Lord Avon lived for two years longer—­long enough, with the help of Ambrose, to fully establish his innocence of the horrible crime, in the shadow of which he had lived so long.  What he could not clear away, however, was the effect of those years of morbid and unnatural life spent in the hidden chambers of the old house; and it was only the devotion of his wife and of his son which kept the thin and flickering