By chapter twenty-five our hero had saved the lives of his future mother and father-in-law, and had rescued the heroine, single-handed, from a Hatton Garden mob.
In the twenty-ninth chapter Aunt Sarah had committed her murder with every circumstance of brutality and unpleasantness, the victim being one of our schoolfellows whom we neither of us loved.
Then for a chapter or two there was some very active police play, interspersed with a few love scenes between the hero and heroine, who—though it never occurred to us at the time—must have enjoyed independent means, which made it quite unnecessary for them to follow the ordinary avocations of organ-grinders.
About the thirty-fifth chapter there was to be a sudden drawing-in of threads from all quarters.
Chapter thirty-sixth was to be devoted to Sarah in the condemned cell.
Thirty-seventh—Alicia discovers her name by seeing it marked on a pocket-handkerchief she had been using at the time she was stolen.
Chapter thirty-eighth—The hero discovers his name by being told it by a solicitor who has known all about it all the time.
Chapter thirty-ninth—All comes right; everybody goes back to their mothers and fathers, and a quiet wedding ensues.
Chapter forty—Execution of Sarah. Finis.
We were tired and hungry by the time our paper was full, but we were jubilant all the same.