glide through a barn full of rats. The prowler feels he is suspected.
Unknown as yet to the London police, he has no desire to invite their
scrutiny. He crosses the way; he falls back; he follows from afar. The
policeman may yet turn away before the safer streets of the metropolis be
gained. No; the cursed Incarnation of Law, with eyes in its slim back,
continues its slow strides at the heels of the unsuspicious Darrell. The
more solitary defiles are already passed,--now that dim lane, with its
dead wall on one side. By the dead wall skulks the prowler; on the other
side still walks the Law. Now--alas for the prowler!--shine out the
throughfares, no longer dim nor deserted,--Leicester Square, the
Haymarket, Pall Mall, Carlton Gardens; Darrell is at his door. The
policeman turns sharply round. There, at the corner near the learned
Club-house, halts the tatterdemalion. Towards the tatterdemalion the
policeman now advances quickly. The tatterdemalion is quicker still;
fled like a guilty thought.

Back, back, back into that maze of passages and courts, back to the mouth
of that black alley. There he halts again. Look at him. He has arrived
in London but that very night, after an absence of more than four years.
He has arrived from the sea-side on foot; see, his shoes are worn into
holes. He has not yet found a shelter for the night. He has been
directed towards that quarter, thronged with adventurers, native and
foreign, for a shelter, safe, if squalid. It is somewhere near that
court at the mouth of which he stands. He looks round: the policeman is
baffled; the coast clear. He steals forth, and pauses under the same
gaslight as that under which Guy Darrell had paused before,--under the
same gaslight, under the same stars. From some recess in his rags he
draws forth a large, distained, distended pocket-book,--last relic of
sprucer days,--leather of dainty morocco, once elaborately tooled, patent
springs, fairy lock, fit receptacle for bank-notes, /billets-doux/,