“He’s caught Tim and put him in prison,” said Pamela, and in a terror-stricken whisper, “and now he’s coming for us, bruvver;” and bruvver, quite as frightened as she, did not attempt to reassure her.  Too terrified to see that the policeman was not coming their way at all, but was quietly striding on towards the house, they caught each other again by the hand and turned to fly.  And fly they did—­one could scarcely have believed such tiny creatures could run so fast and so far.  They did not look which way they went—­only that it was in the other direction from whence they had come.  They ran and ran—­then stopped to take breath and glance timidly behind them, and without speaking ran on again—­till they had left quite half a mile between them and the pretty garden, and ventured at last to stand still and look about them.  They were in a narrow lane—­high hedges shut it in at each side—­they could see very little way before or behind.  But though they listened anxiously, no sound but the twittering of the birds in the trees, and the faint murmur of a little brook on the other side of hedge, was to be heard.

“He can’t be running after us, I don’t fink,” said Pamela, drawing a deep breath.

“No,” said Duke, but then he looked round disconsolately.  “What can us do?” he said.  “Tim will never know to find us here.”

“Tim is in prison,” said Pamela, “It’s no use us going back to meet him.  I know he’s in prison.”

“Then what can us do?” repeated Duke.

“Us must go home and ask Grandpapa to get poor Tim out of prison,” said Pamela.

“But, sister, how can us go home? I don’t know the way, do you?”

Pamela looked about her doubtfully.

“P’raps it isn’t so very far,” she said.  “Us had better go on; and when it’s a long way from the policeman, us can ask somebody the road.”

There seemed indeed nothing else to do.  On they tramped for what seemed to them an endless way, and still they were in the narrow lane with the high hedges; so that, after walking for a very long time, they could have fancied they were in the same place where they started.  And as they met no one they could not ask the way, even had they dared to do so.  At last—­just as they were beginning to get very tired—­the lane quite suddenly came out on a short open bit of waste land, across which a cart-track led to a wide well-kept road.  And this, though they had no idea of it, was actually the coach-road to Sandlingham; for—­though, it must be allowed, more by luck than good management—­they had hit upon a short cut to the highway, which if Tim had known of it would have saved him all his present troubles!