There was dead silence.  Gertie seemed frozen into motionlessness in her corner, almost as if she had had experience of this kind of thing before.  Frank listened with all his ears; it was useless to stare into the dark:  here in this barn the blackness was complete.

At first there was no sound at all, except a very soft occasional scrape of a boot-nail that betokened that the Major was seeking cover somewhere.  Then, so suddenly that he started all over, Frank felt a hand on his arm and smelt a tobacco-laden breath. (Alas! there had been no drink to-night.)

“See here, Frankie, my boy....  I ...  I’ve got the thing on me....  What shall I do with it?...  It’s no good chucking it away:  they’d find it.”

“Got what?” whispered Frank.

“There was a kid coming along ... she had a tin of something ...  I don’t even know what it is....  And ... and she screamed out and someone ran out.  But they couldn’t spot me; it was too dark.”

“Hush!” whispered Frank sharply, and the hand tightened on his arm.  But it was only a rat somewhere in the roof.

“Well?” he said.

“Frankie ...  I suppose you wouldn’t take it from me ... and ... and be off somewhere.  We could meet again later....  I ...  I’m afraid someone may have spotted us coming through the village earlier.  They’ll ... they’ll search, I expect.”

“You can do your own dirty work,” whispered Frank earnestly through the darkness.

“Frankie, my boy ... don’t be hard on a poor devil....  I ...  I can’t leave Gertie.”

“Well, hide it somewhere.”

“No good—­they’d ...  Good God—!”

The voice was stricken into silence once more, as a light, hardly seen before it was gone again, shone through a crack in the side of the barn.  Then there was unmistakable low talking somewhere.

Frank felt the man, crouched at his side, suddenly stand up noiselessly, and in that instant his own mind was made up.

“Give it here, you fool,” he said.  “Here!”

He felt a smooth flat and circular thing thrust suddenly into his hands with a whisper that he could not catch, and simultaneously he heard a rush of footsteps outside.  He had just time to stuff the thing inside his coat and roll over as if asleep when the door flew open, and three or four men, with a policeman at their head, burst into the barn.

(II)

It would be charitable, I think, to suppress the name of the small market-town where the trial was held.  The excellent magistrates who conducted it certainly did their best under very difficult circumstances; for what are you to do if a man accused of theft cordially pleads guilty? and yet, certainly it would distress them to hear of a very obvious miscarriage of justice executed at their hands.

On Friday morning at ten o’clock the vehicles began to arrive—­the motor of the country gentleman, the dog-cart of the neighboring rector, and the brougham of the retired general.  It was the General who presided.