ICTURE now this comedy and its actors. Fisher of the porpoise habit, Mrs. Fisher of the puffy cheek, poor Dugald Cellarini, and these two vast, blue-coated, thief-catching “bobbies” (as with kindly humor the English term their police); all save Dugald looking terribly solemn and important. He, poor man, strove hard to give the affair a lighter turn, but what is one artist in a herd of Philistines? I was not appreciated; that is the truth. A man may defy an empire, a papal bull, an infectious disease, but a prejudice—never! “Constable,” says Fisher, “I have caught him.” Both bobbies look at me with much the same depressing glance as Fisher himself.

“Yes, sir,” says one, in what evidently was intended for a tone of congratulation. “So I see.”

The other bobby evidently agrees with this sentiment. Wonderful unanimity! I have noticed it in the Paris gendarmes also, the same quick and intelligent grasp of a situation.

The latter quality was so conspicuous in my two blue-coated friends that I named them instantly Lecoq and Holmes.

Holmes speaks next, after an impressive pause.

“What's he done?”

“That is the point,” says Fisher, in a tone of such damaging insinuation that I am spurred to my defence.

“Exactly—what have I done?”

“He has endeavored to effect an entry into my house by removing a pane of glass,” says Fisher.

“Pardon me; to call the attention of the servants by rapping upon a pane of glass.”

“Come now, none of that!” says Lecoq, with such severity that I see the situation at once. He is jealous. I have cast an imputation on some fair housemaid—the future Mrs. Lecoq, no doubt.

“An assignation, you think?” I ask, with a reassuring smile.

“Sir!” cries Mrs. Fisher, indignantly. “It was my daughter's window you broke!”

Shall I pose as the lover of Miss Fisher? I have heard that unmarried English girls take strange liberties.

“Your fair daughter—” I begin.

“Is a child of fifteen,” interrupts virtuous Mrs.

Fisher, “and I am certain knows nothing of this person.”

By the expression of their intelligent countenances, Holmes and Lecoq show their concurrence in this opinion.

“Confront her with me!” I demand, folding my arms defiantly.

It has since struck me that this was a happy inspiration, and in the right dramatic key. Unfortunately, it requires an imaginative audience, and I had two Fishers and two bobbies.

Rapidly I had calculated what would happen. The fair and innocent maiden should be aroused from her virgin slumbers; with dishevelled locks, and in a long, loose, and becoming drapery of some soft color (light blue to harmonize with her flaxen hair, for instance), she should be led into this chamber of the inquisition; then my eye should moisten, my voice be as the lute of Apollo, and it would be a thousand francs to a dishonored check that I should melt her into some soft confession. Not that I should ask her to compromise her reputation to save me. Never, on my honor, would I permit that. Indeed, if my plight tempted her to invent a story she might repent of afterwards, I should disavow it with so sincere and honest an air that my captors would exclaim together, “We have misjudged him!”

No, I should merely persuade her to confess that a not ill-looking foreigner had pursued her with glances of chivalrous admiration for some days past, and that from his air of hopeless passion it was not surprising to find him to-night tapping upon her window-pane.

Alas, that so promising a scheme should fail through the incurable poverty of the Fisher spirit! My demand is simply ignored.

“What acquaintance have you with my daughter?” asks Mrs. Fisher, icily.

“You will respect my confidence?” I ask, earnestly.

“We shall use our discretion,” replies the virtuous lady.

“Quite so; we shall use our discretion,” repeats her unspeakable husband.

“I am satisfied with your assurance,” I say. “The discretion of a Fisher is equivalent to the seal of the confessional. I thank you from my heart, and I bow to your judgment.”

“What do you know of my daughter?” Mrs. Fisher repeats, quite unmoved by my candor.

“Madame, I was about to tell you. You asked if I was acquainted with that charming, and, I can assure you on my honor, spotless young lady?”

“I did,” says Mrs. Fisher; “but I do not require any remarks on her character from you, sir.”

“Pardon me; they escaped me inadvertently What I feel deeply I am tempted to say. I do not know Miss Fisher personally. I have not yet ventured to address a word to her, not so much as a syllable, not even a whisper. My respect for her innocence, for her youth, for her parents, has been too great. But this I confess: I have for days, for weeks, for months, followed her loved figure with the eye of chaste devotion! On her walks abroad I have been her silent, frequently her unseen, attendant. Through every street in London I have followed the divine Miss Fisher, as a sailor the polar star! To-night, in a moment of madness, I approached her home; I touched her window that I might afterwards kiss the hand that had come so near her! In my passion I touched too hard, the pane broke, and here I stand before you!”

So completely had I been carried away on the wings of my own fancy that once or twice in the course of this outburst I had committed myself to more than I had any intention of avowing. Be emphatic but never definite, is my counsel to the liar. But I had, unluckily, tied myself to my inventions. The gestures, the intonation, the key of sentiment were beyond criticism; but then I was addressing Mr. and Mrs. Fisher, of Chickawungaree Villa.

They glance at one another, and Lecoq glances at them.

He, honest man, merely touches his head significantly and winks in my direction. The Fishers are not, however, content with this charitable criticism.

“My daughter only returned from her seminary in Switzerland four days ago,” says Mrs. Fisher.

“And she has never visited the streets of London except in Mrs. Fisher's company,” adds her spouse, with a look of what is either dull hatred or impending apoplexy.

Even at that crisis my wits did not desert me.

“My faith!” I cry, “I must be mistaken! It is not, then, Miss Fisher whom I worship! A thousand pardons, sir, and I beg of you to convey them to the lady whom I disturbed under a misapprehension!”

At this there is a pause, nobody volunteering to run with this message to the bedside of Miss Fisher, though I glance pointedly at Holmes, and even make the money in my pocket jingle. At last comes a sound of stifled air trying to force a passage through something dense. It proceeds, I notice, from my friend Fisher. Then it becomes a more articulate though scarcely less disagreeable noise.

“I do not believe a word you say, sir!” he booms.

“My friend, you are an agnostic,” I reply, with a smile.

Fisher only breathes with more apparent difficulty than ever. He is evidently going to deal a heavy blow this time. It falls.

“I charge this person with being concerned in the burglary at Mrs. Thompson's house last night, and with trying to burgle mine,” says he.

He pauses, and then delivers another:

“He has confessed to being an Italian.”

The constables prick up their ears.

“The organ-grinder!” exclaims Holmes, with more excitement than I had thought him capable of.

“The man as made the butler drunk and gagged the cook!” cries Lecoq.

Here is a fine situation for a political fugitive! I am indignant. I am pathetic. 'No use. I explain frankly that I came to see Mr. Hankey. That only deepens suspicion, for it seems that the excellent Hankey inhabited Mount Olympus House next door for only three weeks, and departed a month ago without either paying his rent or explaining the odor of dead bodies proceeding from his cellars. Doubtless my French friends had acted for the best in sending me to him, but would that he had taken the trouble to inform them of his change of address! And then, why had I ever thought of being an Italian? It appeared now that a gentleman of that nationality, having won the confidence of the Thompson children and the Thompson servants by his skill upon the hand-organ, had basely misused it in the fashion indicated by Lecoq. Certainly it was hard to see why such a skilled artist should have returned the very next night to a house three doors away, and then bungled his business so shamefully; but that argument is beyond the imagination of my bobbies. In fact, they seem only too pleased to find a thief so ready to meet them half-way.

“Thank you, sir,” says Holmes, at the conclusion of the painful scene. “We shouldn't mind a drop.”

This means that they are about to be rewarded for their share in the capture by a glass of Fisher's ale. And I? Well, I am not to have any ale, but I am to accompany them to the cells, and next morning make my appearance before the magistrate on one charge of burglary and another of attempted burglary.

I cannot resist one parting shot at my late host.

“Yes, Fisher,” I remark, critically, showing no hurry to leave the room, “I like that portrait of you. It has all your plain, well-fed, plum-pudding appearance, without your unpleasant manner of breathing and your ridiculous conversation—and it is not married to Mrs. Fisher.”

To this there is no reply. Indeed, I do not think they recovered their senses for at least ten minutes after I left the room.