‘We have got him,’ said Joseph Woodman, ‘the right man at last.’
‘Whom have you got?’ asked Barbara.
‘Whom!—why, the escaped felon, Martin Babb.’
A cry. Eve had fainted.
[CHAPTER XXXVIII.]
TAKEN!
We must go back in time, something like an hour and a half or two hours, and follow the police and warders after they left Morwell, to understand how it happened that Martin fell into their hands. They had retired sulky and grumbling. They had been brought a long way, the two warders a very long way, for nothing. When they reached the down, one of the warders observed that he was darned if he had not turned his ankle on the rough stones of the lane. The other said he reckoned they had been shabbily treated, and it was not his ankle but his stomach had been turned by a glass of cider sent down into emptiness. Some cold beef and bread was what he wanted. Whereat he was snapped at by the other, who advised him to kill one of the bullocks on the moor and make his meal on that.
‘Hearken,’ said Joseph; ‘brothers, an idea has struck me. We have not captured the man, and so we shan’t have the reward.’