"Indeed, indeed I have done what I could!" Mr.Walker understood it all, both the high tone and the subsequent fall.
On the Thursday morning, at about ten o'clock, a fly stopped at the gate of the Hogglestock Parsonage, and out of it there came two men.

One was dressed in ordinary black clothes, and seemed from his bearing to be a respectable man of the middle class of life.

He was, however, the superintendent of police for the Silverbridge district.

The other man was a policeman, pure and simple, with the helmet-looking hat which has lately become common, and all the ordinary half-military and wholly disagreeable outward adjuncts of the profession.

"Wilkins," said the superintendent, "likely enough I shall want you, for they tell me the gent is uncommon strange.