described him to me, and I put the description on the placard and in the papers.  But now I learn that Davies’s description is all second-hand.  He had it from you.  Now, I must tell you that a description at second-hand always misses some part or other.  As a magistrate, I never encourage Jack to tell me what Jill says when I can get hold of Jill.  You are Jill, my dear, so now please verify Jack’s description or correct it.  However, the best way will be to give me your own description before I read you his.”

“I will,” said Grace, very much relieved.  “Well, then, he was a man not over forty, thin, and with bony fingers; an enormous gold ring on the little finger of his right hand.  He wore a suit of tweed, all one color, rather tight, and a vulgar neck-handkerchief, almost crimson.  He had a face like a corpse, and very thin lips.  But the most remarkable things were his eyes and his eyebrows.  His eyes were never still, and his brows were very black, and not shaped like other people’s; they were neither straight, like Julia Clifford’s, for instance, nor arched like Walter’s; that is to say, they were arched, but all on one side.  Each brow began quite high up on the temple, and then came down in a slanting drop to the bridge of the nose, and lower than the bridge.  There, if you will give me a pencil I will draw you one of his eyebrows in a minute.”

She drew the eyebrow with masterly ease and rapidity.

“Why, that is the eyebrow of Mephistopheles.”

“And so it is,” said Grace, naively.  “No wonder it did not seem human to me.”

“I am sorry to say it is human.  You can see it in every convict jail.  But,” said he, “how came this villain to sit to you for his portrait?”

“He did not, sir.  But when he was struggling with me to keep me from rescuing my father—­”

“What! did the ruffian lay hands on you?”

“That he did, and so did Mr. Bartley.  But the villain was the leader of it all; and while he was struggling with me—­”

“You were taking stock of him?  Well, they talk of a Jew’s eye; give me a woman’s.  My dear, the second-hand description is not worth a button.  I must write fresh notices from yours, and, above all, instruct the detectives.  You have given me information that will lead to that man’s capture.  As for the gold ring and the tweed suit, they disappeared into space when my placard went up, you may be sure of that, and a felon can paint his face.  But his eyes and eyebrows will do him.  They are the mark of a jail-bird.  I am a visiting justice, and have often noticed the peculiarity.  Draw me his eyebrows, and we will photograph them in Derby; and my detectives shall send copies to Scotland Yard and all the convict prisons.  We’ll have him.”

The Colonel paused suddenly in his triumphant prediction, and said, “But what was that you let fall about Bartley?  He was no party to this foul crime.  Why, he has worked night and day to save you and Hope.  Indeed, you both owe your lives to him.”