"As the crow flies!" murmured Mr. Rodney, imbecile in the presence of this delightful programme: a few hours with a maniac, succeeded by horse-stealing, and continuing with twenty or thirty miles across a difficult country in a top-hat, the whole to conclude with a cold-blooded murder in a marsh. However, he followed the Duke with tottering steps, and a tongue which clave to the roof of his mouth.
Meanwhile the paragon had indeed escaped from the palace. After finding that it was impossible to swarm down the sheets, Mr. Bush took counsel with himself and resolved to dare all in the effort to reach a place of safety beyond the vengeance of the Duke. He therefore, choosing a moment when Miss Bindler was engaged in reloading her burglar-destroyer for the third time, stole forth from his bedroom and gained the baronial hall unobserved. Once there, he, with cautious hand, proceeded to unbar the mighty front door, and found himself presently facing a wild night. The wind was getting up. The rain was coming down. The darkness was intense. He hesitated. But death was behind him, and he resolved to go. Only for one instant did he stay to catch up from the hall-table a bottle of whisky and a box of cigars, provender for the journey. In justice to him, it must here be stated that he had no time to notice that the whisky bottle was of silver, engraved with the Emperor's crest, a bun couchant on a plate d'or, and that the cigar-box happened by some oversight to be made of gold set with turquoises, and surrounded by a legend setting forth that it was presented to Mr. Lite by the Bun-makers' Company as a mark of their "affection and regard." Laden thus, the paragon disappeared into the darkness, made his way to the stables, by a fortunate chance ran across a shed in which the head coachman—a venerable and a very heavy man—stabled his own private tricycle, and by the time the Duke was searching for him in the sink, was tricycling at a good round pace along the highroad that led to Bungay. He flattered himself that his exit had been unnoticed. It had, however, been observed by two people, the Duchess, who was at that moment fleeing through an adjoining boudoir, and Mr. Harrison, who was running away in a contiguous winter garden. Now, the groom of the chambers had a stern sense of duty, which did not entirely desert him even when he was trying to escape from being strangled. He therefore stayed his flight to inform the Emperor that the paragon had just made off, loaded with gold and silver, presentation caskets, and other costly treasure, and then continued running away until his strength was totally exhausted.
THE TRUE LIFE.
As the first pale streak of dawn rose over the peaceful marshes of Bungay, and touched with palest rose the thatched eaves of the Farm, Mr. Jacob Minnidick, as was his custom, arose cursing and swearing from his truckle bed. Mr. Minnidick possessed a temperament which displayed itself chiefly in personal abuse, and he was quite as ready to direct this abuse against Nature as against man. Indeed, he was accustomed to treat the weather as his deliberate enemy, the sun or rain as full of a spite against him, the very earth itself as emphatically hostile to him, emphatically set on "getting at him" so far as Providence permitted.
"Darn it!" remarked Mr. Minnidick, putting on a stocking with a hole in it. "Darn it all, I say!"
And he proceeded to make a sketchy toilet of a rather corduroy nature, after which he walked to the narrow window and looked forth across the marshes. The grass was saturated with rain. Mr. Minnidick viewed it with sour disfavour.
"A deal of good it'll do us," he muttered. "Didn't I 'ave to drain the water off only yesterday, and the three-feet-sixer choked up, as I allers knew 'twould be? Darn the rain, I say!"