A chill went over me.
'This is no common adventure,' thinks I to myself.

'You have got hold of a man of character, St.Ives! A bite-hard, a bull-dog, a weasel is on your trail; and how are you to throw him off ?' Who was he?
By some of his expressions I judged he was a hanger-on of courts.

But in what character had he followed the assizes?
As a simple spectator, as a lawyer's clerk, as a criminal himself, or--last and worst supposition--as a Bow-street 'runner'?
The cart would wait for me, perhaps, half a mile down our onward road, which I was already following.

And I told myself that in a few minutes' walking, Bow-street runner or not, I should have him at my mercy.

And then reflection came to me in time.