The escape of Lionel Dering from Duxley Gaol created an extraordinary sensation throughout the country. Government at once offered a reward of two hundred pounds, which, a week later, was increased to four hundred. The telegraph was set to work in every direction, and at every sea-port in England and on the Continent sharp eyes were made sharper still by the possibility of winning so magnificent a prize. But day passed after day till a fortnight had come and gone, and still there was not the slightest clue to the whereabouts of the missing man; nor the smallest scrap of comfort for the disconsolate soul of Mr. Drayton, the superintendent of the Duxley police.

However positive Jabez Creede, his landlady, and the various prison warders might be that Mr. Hoskyns, and no one but he, was the man who had assisted Lionel Dering to escape, it was easily proved that they were one and all in the wrong. On the evening of the escape Mr. Hoskyns had dined with Mr. Tressil and three or four other members of the bar, and had not parted from them till after midnight. This fact the gentlemen in question all came forward and swore to, and Mr. Hoskyns was at once exculpated from any share in the extraordinary escape of his client. With Jabez Creede it fared somewhat more hardly. Every one at first was inclined to regard him in the light of an accomplice, and it was not till after he had spent upwards of a week in prison, and had been examined and remanded about a dozen times, that he was able to prove how really innocent he was of any complicity in the heinous crime of which he was accused.

But who, then, was the consummate actor who had so cleverly outwitted, not only drink-soddened Jabez Creede, but the keen-eyed warders of the prison, who, for weeks past, had been in the habit of seeing the real Hoskyns almost daily, and who, one would have thought, were about the last men in the world to be so easily deceived? Government supplemented its second reward for the capture of the escaped prisoner by offering a hundred and fifty pounds for the capture of the man who had helped him to escape. But Government, to all appearance, might as well have never offered to unloosen its purse-strings.

From the moment Lionel Dering and the arch-impostor who aided and abetted him in his nefarious scheme set foot outside the walls of Duxley Gaol, they seemed to have vanished into thinnest air Like creatures of a dream, they had melted utterly away; and not all the ten thousand practised eyes that were on the look-out for them here, there, and everywhere, could succeed in finding the faintest clue to their hiding-place.

Of the two, as far as his private feelings went, Mr. Drayton would much rather have captured the sham lawyer than the escaped prisoner. He had no ill feeling towards Mr. Dering. Under similar circumstances, who would not have attempted to escape? But towards the sham Hoskyns, who had deceived everybody with such apparent ease, he certainly felt a degree of animus which had kept him in a chronic state of ill-temper both at home and abroad ever since the discovery of the escape, and which would have caused it to fare but ill with the miscreant in question, could Mr. Drayton\'s heavy hand but once have been laid upon his shoulder.

The celebrated Mr. Whiffins, of Scotland Yard, had, in the first instance, been sent down to investigate the case, and had, so to speak, taken the conduct of it into his own hands. But Mr. Drayton did not believe in Mr. Whiffins--did not believe in his talents as a detective, and secretly resented his interference. But, by-and-by, Mr. Whiffins went back to London not much wiser than he had left it, and Mr. Drayton was left to pursue his investigations in peace.

Many and profound were the cogitations of the worthy superintendent of police, indulged in the privacy of his own circle, before the following deductions worked themselves out to a logical issue in his mind:--The man who personated Mr. Hoskyns so successfully must evidently have been thoroughly acquainted with the speech, dress, gait, manner, and every minute peculiarity in the appearance and habits of that gentleman, down even to his yellow pocket-handkerchief and his silver snuff box. He must also have had some knowledge of Jabez Creede, and of the position he held with regard to his employer. He must also have known Mr. Dering, and Mr. Dering must have known him: the supposition, in fact, being that the two men were bosom friends--for who but a staunch friend would have run the risk of failure in attempting so remarkable an escape? Then, the man, Whoever he might be, must also have had some acquaintance with the gaol and with the gaol officials. Had he not mentioned two or three of the warders by name? Then, he must be a man about the same size and build as Mr. Hoskyns, with a thin, clear-cut face, something like that of the old lawyer. Having worked out his problem so far, Mr. Drayton\'s next care was to look carefully round, and endeavour to "spot" the man in whom the various requirements of the case were most evidently combined.

The result of the cautious inquiries instituted by Mr. Drayton was, that suspicion pointed in one direction, and in one only.

There was only one person to be found to whom the whole of the deductions worked out in the superintendent\'s mind would clearly apply. That person was Mr. Tom Bristow.

Mr. Bristow was a friend of the prisoner, and had visited him almost daily in gaol. He was well acquainted both with Mr. Hoskyns and Jabez Creede; and, taking the difference of age into account, he was not unlike the old lawyer in personal appearance.

"I think I\'ve nailed you, my fine fellow!" said Mr. Drayton triumphantly to himself one evening, as he shook the ashes out of his pipe and brought his cogitations to an end for the time being.

But it is one thing to suspect a man, and another to have sufficient evidence against him to warrant his arrest. The evidence against Mr. Bristow, such as it was, was entirely presumptive, and even Sir Harry Cripps, the senior magistrate, anxious as he was that the culprit should be brought to light, had yet some doubts as to the advisability of issuing a warrant for the arrest of Tom. Now, as it happened, Sir Harry and Mr. Culpepper were old and intimate friends, and when, in the course of conversation, Mr. Drayton chanced to mention that Mr. Bristow had more than once been up to Pincote to dinner, Sir Harry caught at the idea, and decided to take no further steps in the matter till after he had consulted with his old friend. So he at once dropped the squire a note, in which he asked him to look in at the Town Hall on a matter of private business when next in Duxley.

Next morning brought the Squire, and the case was at once laid before him. He laughed loud and long at the idea of "young Bristow," whom he knew so well, having had anything to do with so nefarious a transaction. He did not scruple to express in voluble terms his gratification at poor Dering\'s escape--thereby shocking Sir Harry\'s susceptibilities as a magistrate not a little--but that Bristow was the disguised conspirator who had assisted him to escape was a thought which found no resting-place in the squire\'s mind. "He\'s too simple--too straightforward ever to think of such a thing--letting alone the carrying of it out," said Mr. Culpepper. "You don\'t know Bristow as well as I do, or you would never connect such an idea with his name."

"Suppose we send for him," said Sir Harry, "and put a few questions to him quietly in this room?"

"With all my heart," said the squire; "and have your pains for your reward."

So a messenger was sent round to Tom\'s lodgings with Mr. Culpepper\'s compliments, and would Mr. Bristow be good enough to step up to the magistrate\'s private room at the Town Hall for a few minutes?

Tom, who happened to be at home, went back with the messenger without a moment\'s hesitation; but it would, perhaps, be too much to say that his heart did not misgive him a little as he walked smilingly into the lion\'s den. Mr. Culpepper shook hands with him, and pointed to a chair next his own. Sir Harry nodded and said, "How do you do, Mr. Bristow?" but looked anxious and flurried. Drayton coughed behind his hand, and quietly changed his position so as to get between Tom and the door. "There\'s no knowing what may happen," said the superintendent to himself. "He may grow desperate as soon as he finds it\'s all up with him."

"We have sent for you, Bristow," said the squire, "that we may have a little talk with you about Mr. Dering\'s extraordinary escape."

"It was indeed an extraordinary escape, sir," said Tom; "but I am not aware that I am in a position to furnish you with any special information respecting it. The \'Duxley Gazette\' seems to me----"

"No--no, that isn\'t what we mean," interrupted the squire. "To be plain with you, Bristow, a report has got abroad--no matter bow it originated--that you were somehow mixed up in that very queer piece of business."

"In other words, people think that because I was Mr. Dering\'s friend, it must be I who assisted him to escape?"

"That\'s just about it," said the squire. "You couldn\'t have put it in plainer language."

"Well, gentlemen, I will tell you candidly that believing firmly, as I do, in Mr. Dering\'s innocence, I would gladly have assisted him to escape had it lain in my power to do so. But I think I shall be able to prove to your entire satisfaction that, unless it is possible for a man to be in two places at once, I was in a direction quite the opposite of that of Duxley gaol at the exact time that the escape was being carried into effect."

"There! what did I tell you?" said the squire triumphantly. "I knew the lad was innocent."

"Mr. Bristow has yet to enlighten us as to his proceedings on the night in question," said Sir Harry, stiffly.

"In the first place," said Tom, "if you will kindly send for Mrs. Potts, my landlady, who is, I believe, a most trustworthy woman, you will find on inquiry of her that, on the night of the escape, the clock had just struck eleven as I reached home. Mrs. Potts, will remember the circumstance, because, a minute or two after going indoors, I heard her fastening up the house as usual, and I called over the banisters to ask her the time, my watch having stopped for want of winding up. On hearing my question, Mrs. Potts held up her c............