bed."

"So bad as that, is it? What's the trouble?"

"I've been up all night and all day, and little to eat and naught to drink, and I be lame."

"Lame, are you?" The official turned to my aunt. "You know you didn't ought to bring a lame old lady into a crowd like this."

"I didn't bring her. My nephew brought us all."

"Then the sooner, I should say, your nephew takes you all away again, the better."

The official took himself off. Mr. Poltifen made a remark. His tone was a trifle sour.

"I cannot say that I think we are spending a profitable and pleasurable day in London. I understood that the object which we had in view was to make researches into Dickens's London, or I should not have brought my books."

The "parish idiot" began to moan.

"I be that hungry--I be! I be!"

"Here," I cried: "here's half-a-crown for you. Go to that refreshment-stall and cram yourself with penny buns to bursting point."

Off started Sammy Trevenna; he had sense enough to catch my meaning. My aunt called after him.

"Sammy! You mustn't leave us. Wait until we come."

But Sammy declined. When, hurrying after him, catching him by the shoulder, she sought to detain him, he positively showed signs of fight.

Oh! it was a delightful day! Enjoyable from start to finish. Somehow I got Mrs. Penna, with my aunt and the remnant, into the main building and planted them on chairs, and provided them with buns and similar dainties, and instructed them not, on any pretext, to budge from where they were until I returned with the truants, of whom, straightway, I went in search. I do not mind admitting that I commenced by paying a visit to a refreshment-bar upon my own account--I needed something to support me. Nor, having comforted the inner man, did I press forward on my quest with undue haste. Exactly as I expected, I found Jane and Ellen in a sheltered alcove in the grounds, with Daniel Dyer on one side, the red-faced gentleman on the other, and Master Stephen Treen nowhere to be seen. The red-faced gentleman's friendship with Jane had advanced so rapidly that when I suggested her prompt return to my aunt, he considered himself entitled to object with such vehemence that he actually took his coat off and invited me to fight. But I was not to be browbeaten by him; and, having made it clear that if he attempted to follow I should call the police, I marched off in triumph with my prizes, only to discover that the young women had tongues of their own, with examples of whose capacity they favoured me as we proceeded. I believe that if I had been my aunt, I should, then and there, have boxed their ears.

My aunt received us with a countenance of such gloom that I immediately perceived that something frightful must have occurred.

"Thomas!" she exclaimed, "I have been robbed!"

"Robbed? My dear aunt! Of what--your umbrella?"

"Of everything!"

"Of everything? I hope it's not so bad as that."

"It is. I have been robbed of purse, money, tickets, everything, down to my pocket-handkerchief and bunch of keys."

It was the fact--she had. Her pocket, containing all she possessed--out of Cornwall--had been cut out of her dress and carried clean away. It was a very neat piece of work, as the police agreed when we laid the case before them. They observed that, of course, they would do their best, but they did not think there was much likelihood of any of the stolen property being regained; adding that, in a crowd like that, people ought to look after their pockets, which was cold comfort for my aunt, and rounded the day off nicely.

Ticketless, moneyless, returning to Cornwall that night was out of the question. I put "the party" up. My aunt had my bed, Mrs. Penna was accommodated in the same room, the others somewhere and somehow. I camped out. In the morning, the telegraph being put in motion, funds were forthcoming, and "the party" started on its homeward way. The railway authorities would listen to nothing about lost excursion tickets. My aunt had to pay full fare--twenty-one and twopence halfpenny--for each. I can still see her face as she paid.

Two days afterwards Master Stephen Treen and Mr. Matthew Holman were reported found by the police, Mr. Holman showing marked signs of a distinct relapse from grace. My aunt had to pay for their being sent home. The next day she received, through the post, in an unpaid envelope, the lost excursion tickets. No comment accompanied them. Her visiting-card was in the purse; evidently the thief, having no use for old excursion tickets, had availed himself of it to send them back to her. She has them to this day, and never looks at them without a qualm. That was her first excursion; she tells me that never, under any circumstances, will she try another.

The Irregularity of the Juryman

Chapter I

THE JURYMAN IS STARTLED

His first feeling was one of annoyance. All-round annoyance. Comprehensive disgust. He did not want to be a juryman. He flattered himself that he had something better to do with his time. Half-a-dozen matters required his attention. Instead of which, here he was obtruding himself into matters in which he did not take the faintest interest. Actually dragged into interference with other people's most intimate affairs. And in that stuffy court. And it had been a principle of his life never to concern himself with what was no business of his. Talk about the system of trial by jury being a bulwark of the Constitution! At that moment he had no opinion of the Constitution; or its bulwarks either.

Then there were his colleagues. He had never been associated with eleven persons with whom he felt himself to be less in sympathy. The fellow they had chosen to be foreman he felt convinced was a cheesemonger. He looked it. The others looked, if anything, worse. Not, he acknowledged, that there was anything inherently wrong in being a cheesemonger. Still, one did not want to sit cheek by jowl with persons of that sort for an indefinite length of time. And there were cases--particularly in the Probate Court--which lasted days; even weeks. If he were in for one of those! The perspiration nearly stood on his brow at the horror of the thought.

What was the case about? What was that inarticulate person saying? Philip Poland knew nothing about courts--and did not want to--but he took it for granted that the gentleman in a wig and gown, with his hands folded over his portly stomach, was counsel for one side or the other--though he had not the slightest notion which. He had no idea how they managed things in places of this sort. As he eyed him he felt that he was against him anyhow. If he were paid to speak, why did not the man speak up?

By degrees, for sheer want of something else, Mr. Roland found that he was listening. After all, the man was audible. He seemed capable, also, of making his meaning understood. So it was about a will, was it? He might have taken that for granted. He always had had the impression that the Probate Court was the place for wills. It seemed that somebody had left a will; and this will was in favour of the portly gentleman's client; and was as sound, as equitable, as