paid to protect them. If you choose to take advantage of the
weakness of our unfortunate friend, no doubt you are legally
entitled to take her. But if you fancy you have any legal right to
bully us, you will find yourself in the wrong box.'

"The truth and dignity of this staggered the policeman for a
moment. Under cover of their advantage my five persecutors turned
for an instant on me faces like faces of the damned and then
swished off into the darkness. When the constable first turned his
lantern and his suspicions on to them, I had seen the telegraphic
look flash from face to face saying that only retreat was possible
now.

"By this time I was sinking slowly to the pavement, in a state of
acute reflection. So long as the ruffians were with me, I dared not
quit the role of drunkard. For if I had begun to talk reasonably
and explain the real case, the officer would merely have thought
that I was slightly recovered and would have put me in charge of my
friends. Now, however, if I liked I might safely undeceive him.

"But I confess I did not like. The chances of life are many, and
it may doubtless sometimes lie in the narrow path of duty for a
clergyman of the Church of England to pretend to be a drunken old
woman; but such necessities are, I imagine, sufficiently rare to
appear to many improbable. Suppose the story got about that I had
pretended to be drunk. Suppose people did not all think it was
pretence!

"I lurched up, the policeman half-lifting me. I went along weakly
and quietly for about a hundred yards. The officer evidently