My Escape

“Rather a forensic triumph for you, eh, Lytton, my boy!”

“A neat job, I should say, old fellow!”

I smiled, a little complacently, as I took up the newspaper to await the sounding gong which was to proclaim the evening meal at the principal hotel of the little country town. Jones was quite right; and so was Harry Davison. That morning’s work had been a forensic triumph, and the little job, legally speaking, had been most neatly completed. As District Attorney, it had been my duty to prosecute, unsparingly, the bold criminal brought up to the bar, and I had abated no whit of that duty. The sentence—imprisonment for a certain number of years—was owing chiefly to my efforts, and as such I gloried in its clauses.

“The fact is,” said Jones, “these burglaries were getting a little too audaciously frequent. It’s just as well to have the gang broken up.”

“Did you observe those ill-looking fellows by the farther window?” questioned Davison. “By the black looks they cast at you, Lytton, I was rather inclined to think they might be relations or boon companions of Mr. Barry Jumpington, or Jefferson, or whatever his name is—the villain who received a just sentence.”

“I have not the least doubt of it,” I returned, calmly. “I hope it will be a judicious lesson to them, and I only wish I had half a dozen or so of them just exactly where I have their illustrious compatriot.”

“It would do no harm,” remarked Jones, dryly; and here the conversation dropped.

My drive homeward was a long and a late one, and the clock in my little study struck eleven as I checked the horses in front of the small stuccoed portico.

“Sam! Where are you, Sam! Do you mean to keep me here all day, you lazy fellow?”

I spoke rather more sharply than was my wont, for I was tired and impatient, and the crabbed old servant, never very punctilious towards his superiors, retorted as he emerged… Read More