with an abstracted eye. At last he spoke.

"Quite so; but look here, if the local feeling is as lively as that
there are a good many points to consider. I believe the new Act will
enable me to collar him now if I think it best. But is it best? A
serious rising would do us no good in Parliament, and the government
has enemies in England as well as Ireland. It won't do if I have
done what looks a little like sharp practice, and then only raised a
revolution."

"It's all the other way," said the man called Wilson, rather
quickly. "There won't be half so much of a revolution if you arrest
him as there will if you leave him loose for three days longer. But,
anyhow, there can't be anything nowadays that the proper police
can't manage."

"Mr. Wilson is a Londoner," said the Irish detective, with a smile.

"Yes, I'm a cockney, all right," replied Wilson, "and I think I'm
all the better for that. Especially at this job, oddly enough."

Sir Walter seemed slightly amused at the pertinacity of the third
officer, and perhaps even more amused at the slight accent with
which he spoke, which rendered rather needless his boast about his
origin.

"Do you mean to say," he asked, "that you know more about the
business here because you have come from London?"

"Sounds funny, I know, but I do believe it," answered Wilson. "I