“I daresay he is frightened,” said the Duke. “He is only fifteen, you know.”

“You don’t say!” marvelled the constable. “Well, I did use to think my own boys was well-growed lads, but if that don’t beat all!”

“I thought you had boys of your own,” said the Duke softly. “Full of mischief too, I daresay?”

He had struck the right note. The constable beamed upon him, and enunciated: “Four fine lads, sir, and everyone as lawless as the town bull!”

The Duke settled down to listen sympathetically for the next twenty minutes to an exact account of the prowess of the constable’s four sons, their splendid stature, their youthful pranks, and present excellence. The time was not wasted. When the recital ended the Duke had added an officer of the law to his circle of friends and well-wishers; and the constable had agreed to allow him to visit the prisoner.

The Duke then asked to see the pistol. The constable at once produced it, and the most cursory examination was enough to show the Duke that it had never been loaded, much less fired.

The constable looked very much taken aback by this. He admitted that he had not cared to meddle with such a gun, since it looked to him like one of them murdering duelling-pistols which went off if a man so much as breathed on them. “Well, it will not do so when it is unloaded,” said the Duke. “Take a look at it now!”

The constable received the gun gingerly from him, and inspected it. Then he scratched his head. “I’m bound to say it ain’t never been fired, not from the looks of it,” he owned. “But Mr. Stalybridge and his man and the coachman, they all say as the young varmint pretty nigh shot the ear off the coachman!”

“But what does the boy say?” asked the Duke.

“Well, that’s it, sir. He don’t say nothing. Proper sullen, that’s what he is!”

The Duke rose. “He’ll talk to me. Will you take me to him?”

When the door was opened into Tom’s cell, that young gentleman was discovered seated on the bench in a dejected attitude, his head propped in his hands. He looked up defensively, disclosing a bruised countenance, but when he perceived the Duke his sulky look vanished, and he jumped up, exclaiming with a distinct sob in his voice: “Oh, sir! Oh, Mr. Rufford! Indeed, I am very sorry! But I didn’t do it!”

“No, I don’t think you did,” replied the Duke, in his serene way. “But you have been behaving very badly, you know, and you quite deserve to be locked up!”

Tom sniffed. “Well, when you went away, I didn’t know what to do, for I had very little money, and there was the shot to be paid, and I quite thought you had deserted us! Why did you go, sir? Where have you been?”

“To tell you the truth, I couldn’t help but go,” said the Duke ruefully. “I am very sorry to have made you uncomfortable, but I think you should have known I would not desert you. Now, tell me this, Tom! What did you do to make three persons swear that you fired at one of them?”

The cloud descended again on to Tom’s face. He flushed, glanced up under his lashes at the interested constable, and growled: “I shan’t say.”

“Then I am much afraid that you will be either hanged or transported,” replied the Duke calmly.

The constable nodded his approval of this, and Tom looked up, his ruddy colour fading swiftly, and cried: “Oh, no! No, no, they would not! I didn’t hurt anyone, nor even take the old man’s purse!”

“What did you do?” asked the Duke.

Tom was silent for a moment. Then he muttered, staring at his boots: “Well, if you will know, it was a ginger-beer bottle!”

His worst fears were realized. The constable’s jaw dropped for a moment, and then he burst into a hearty guffaw, slapping his leg with ecstasy, and saying that it beat the Dutch downright.

“Ginger-beer bottle?” repeated the Duke blankly.

“That’s right, sir,” said the constable, wiping his eyes. “Regular boy’s trick! You shakes the bottle up good, and out flies the cork, just like it was a pistol-shot. Lordy, lordy, to think of three growed men scared of a popping cork! It’ll be the laugh of the town, that’s what it’ll be!”

It was plain that Tom would almost have preferred to have owned to firing a pistol. He hunched his shoulder and glowered at the constable. The Duke said: “Well, thank God for that! What did you do with the bottle?”

“I threw it into the ditch,” muttered Tom. “And you need not think I meant to steal the old man’s purse, because Pa would have paid him back! And in any event it is different when one is being a highwayman.”

“Now, that’s where you’re wrong, young man!” said the constable severely. “There ain’t a mite of difference—not but that,” he added, turning despairingly to the Duke, “you’ll never get a young varmint like this here to believe you, tell him till Doomsday! All the same, they be, talking a pack of nonsense about Dick Turpin, and the like!”

The Duke, who could remember thinking that a career as a highwayman would be fraught with romance and adventure, refrained from comment. He merely said that the ginger-beer bottle must be searched for, to prove the veracity of Tom’s story; The constable agreed that this should be done; Tom was locked once more into his cell; and the Duke set off, with a junior constable, and in a hired gig, to the point on the road where Mr. Stalybridge had deposed that he had been held up. This, fortunately, was easy to locate, and after a short search the bottle was found. It was borne back in triumph to the senior constable; and after the Duke had slid a gleaming golden coin into his hand, to compensate him (he said) for all the trouble he had been put to, no one could have been more anxious than this comfortable officer to see Tom set at liberty. He favoured the Duke with some valuable information about Mr. Stalybridge, fortified with which the Duke set out to pay a call on this injured citizen.

He found a pompous little man, who was obviously set on vengeance. He strutted about his book-room, declaiming, and the Duke soon perceived that an appeal to his charity would be useless. He let him talk himself out, and then said gently: “It is all very bad, but the boy did no more than loose the cork of a ginger-beer bottle at your coachman, sir.”

“I do not believe you, sir!” stated Mr. Stalybridge, staring at him out of a pair of protuberant eyes.

“But it will be proved,” said the Duke. He smiled rather mischievously at his host. “I found the bottle, you know. With one of the constables. And it will be shown that the pistol has never been fired. I am so very sorry!”

“Sorry?” said Mr. Stalybridge explosively.

“Yes—but perhaps you will not care for it, after all! Only everyone will laugh so! To be giving up one’s purse because a cork flies out of a bottle—” The Duke broke off, and raised his handkerchief to his lips. “Forgive me!” he apologized. “I am sure it was enough to frighten anyone!”

“Sir!” said Mr. Stalybridge, and stopped.

“And the boy is only fifteen years old!” added the Duke, in a stifled voice.

Mr. Stalybridge spoke without drawing breath for several moments. The Duke heard him with an air of polite interest. Mr. Stalybridge sat down plump in the nearest chair, and puffed, glaring at him. The Duke sighed, and made as if to rise. “You are adamant, then,” he said. “I had best visit the magistrate—Mr. Oare, is it?”

Mr. Stalybridge swelled slightly, and delivered himself of a bitter animadversion on the jobbery that raised to posts of authority those who were demonstrably unfit to hold them. The. Duke perceived with satisfaction that the constable had not misled him: Mr. Stalybridge and Mr. Oare were at loggerheads. Mr. Stalybridge eyed him in a frustrated way, and said: “If I withdraw the charge it will be out of pity for one who is of tender years!”

“Thank you,” said the Duke, holding out his hand. “You are a great deal too good, sir. You must believe that I am excessively sorry that you should have been troubled by this badly-behaved boy. Indeed, he shall come up to beg your pardon and to thank you himself.”

Mr. Stalybridge hesitated, but after looking very hard at the Duke for a moment or two, he took the hand, saying, however: “You go too fast, young man! I said if!”

The Duke smiled at him understandingly. “Of course!”

“And I don’t want to see the young rascal!” said Mr. Stalybridge angrily. “I only hope it may be a lesson to him, and if you are a relative of his I beg you will take better care of him in the future!”

“I shall not let him out of my sight,” promised the Duke. “And now perhaps we had best visit Mr. Oare.”

It seemed for a time that Mr. Stalybridge was going to draw back, but after the Duke had artlessly suggested that nothing should be said of the ginger-beer bottle he consented to go with him, and to withdraw his charge against Tom. By the time this had been accomplished, and all the other formalities necessary for Tom’s release fulfilled, the day was considerably advanced, and the Duke a good deal the poorer. But he bore Tom off in triumph, and that without having recourse to the use of his own title and consequence, a circumstance which pleased him so much that he quite forgave Tom for his outrageous behaviour. To have outwitted a band of kidnappers, wrested a potential felon from the hands of the Law, and dealt successfully with so inimical a gentleman as Mr. Stalybridge, all within twenty-four hours, gave him a much better idea of himself than ever he had had before. There had been times when he had regretted embarking on his odyssey, but although his efforts on Tom’s behalf had been extremely exhausting, and although his money and his stock of clean linen were both running low, he no longer regretted it. He had made an interesting discovery: the retainers who sped to anticipate his every need, and guarded him from all contact with the common world, might be irksome at times, or at times a comfort to him, but he knew now that they were no more necessary to him than his high title: plain Mr. Dash of Nowhere in Particular could fend for himself.