“It’s all been a muddle, Toby,” said Mrs. Siggs at last, still in the same cautious whisper. “If the old Squire could only know what has happened, I think ’e’d be a bit sorry ’e cast that boy loose, an’ took up with the younger. Lor’, Toby—wot a boy ’e was!”
Toby nodded his head slowly. “Ah!” he ejaculated. “There ain’t no up-settin’ about me, or about you, ole gal; we knows ourselves for ordinary folk. But that boy moved, and talked, and ’eld ’isself like a gen’leman.”
“That ’e did!” replied Betty, with a vigorous nod. “Lor’, Toby—if ’e’d ’ave bin at the ’All—we’d ’ave ’ad no talks about pore ruined gals; no policemen in the ’ouse—no ’untin’ an’ dodgin’ an’ ’idin’ like this. God knows ’ow it’s all goin’ to end, Toby.”
The house had been shut, so far as its public capacity was concerned, for some time. Knowing, however, that the Inspector must presently make his appearance, and that, in any case, his bed was reserved for him, Mrs. Siggs and her husband sat on over the fire, each filled with sad thoughts, and ready, from the events of the evening, for anything which could happen.
Presently there came a heavy knock at the front door; Mrs. Siggs, with a hand on her ample bosom, started, and looked appealingly at Toby. That gentleman, rising with a determined countenance, proceeded to the door, and flung it open. Exactly what he was prepared to see, it is impossible to say; but he was certainly not prepared for the sight which met his eyes.
Out of the darkness there staggered into the place a solitary figure—that of Inspector Tokely. His hat was gone—one side of his face was grazed and bleeding; he was covered with mud and water almost from head to foot; and his coat was torn right across one shoulder. Gasping and weary, he shook a fist in the face of the astonished Toby Siggs, and snapped out his wrath at that innocent man.
“You scoundrel!” he shouted—“You infernal villain! This is all a plot—a conspiracy—you know it is! I’m lured out of this place, and go racing and chasing across country—where there are no street lamps as there ought to be, and no constables to whistle for. I bark my face against a tree—put there on purpose, I’ve no doubt, for me to run my head against; I fall into a ditch, which ought to have been drained long ago; I lose my hat, which cost nine-and-sixpence; I tear my coat on a barbed wire fence, which ought never to have been put up. And—to crown it all—I lose my prisoner!”
Betty Siggs, who had come to the door of the little parlour, suddenly clapped her hands and cried out—with an exclamation of so much relief, that the Inspector turned savagely upon her.
“Yes, Ma’am—laugh—giggle—clap your hands—scream with joy, Ma’am! I like it—it does me good! How will you like it, when you appear in the dock—the dock, Ma’am!—on a charge of aiding and abetting a prisoner, to escape? What about windows covered with curtains——”
“What would you ’ave ’em covered with?” retorted Betty, with a laugh—“wall paper?”