“What do you say to that?” he asked.

But Boyds shook his head.

“There’s some trick in it.  Let him run on first—­I daresay!  The children’s safe enough with those as sent him here to find out.  No, no; lock him up, and I’ll step round to Mr. Bartlemore’s,”—­Mr. Bartlemore was the nearest magistrate,—­“and see what he thinks about it all.  It’ll not take me long, and it’ll show this young man here we’re in earnest.  Lock him up.”

Simpkins pushed Tim, though not roughly, into the little room, and turned the key on him.  The boy no longer made any resistance or appeal.  Mr. Boyds put on his hat and went out, and the police office returned to its former state of sleepy quiet so far as appearances went.  But behind the locked door a poor ragged boy was sobbing his eyes out, twisting and writhing himself about in real agony of mind.

“Oh, my master and missy, why did I leave you?  What will they be doing?  Oh they was right and I was wrong!  The perlice is a bad, wicked, unbelieving lot—­oh my, oh my!—­if onst I was but out o’ here——­” but he stopped suddenly.  The words he had said without thinking seemed to say themselves over again to him as if some one else had addressed them to him.

“Out o’ here,” why shouldn’t he get out of here?  And Tim looked round him curiously.  There was a small window and it was high up.  There was no furniture but the bench on which he was sitting.  But Tim was the son of a mason, and it was not for nothing that he had lived with gipsies for so long.  He was a perfect cat at climbing, and as slippery as an eel in the way he could squeeze himself through places which you would have thought scarcely wide enough for his arm.  His sobs ceased, his face lighted up again; he drew out of his pocket his one dearest treasure, from which night or day he was never separated, his pocket-knife, and, propping the bench lengthways slanting against the wall like a ladder, he managed to fix it pretty securely by scooping out a little hollow in the roughly-boarded floor, so as to catch the end of the bench and prevent its slipping down.  And just as Superintendent Boyds was stepping into Squire Bartlemore’s study to wait for that gentleman’s appearance, a pair of bright eyes in a round sunburnt face might have been seen spying the land from the small window high up in the wall of the lock-up room of the police office.  Spying it to good purpose, as will soon be seen, though in the meantime I think it will be well to return to Duke and Pamela all alone in the copse.

Tim had not been gone five minutes before they began to wonder when he would be back again.  They sat quite still, however, for perhaps a quarter of an hour, for they were just a little frightened at finding themselves really alone.  If Tim had turned back again I don’t think he would have had much difficulty in persuading them to go with him, even to the dreadful police!  But Tim never thought of turning back; he had too thoroughly taken the little people at their word.