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Not a scratch had the bear received from any one of the party. The bullet of Black Jim had laid him low. Although hurriedly aimed, it had reached the animal's heart, and all the time that Captain Bunting was struggling to overcome his irresistible tendency to sleep, poor bruin was lying a helpless and lifeless body at the foot of the oak-tree.
At the same time, he also admitted for the Special Investigator was very honest, and he had a good bit of space to fill in the enterprising paper which had engaged him to probe the awful mystery that there were thousands of rubber soles being worn in London. . . . And when she came to that statement Mrs. Bunting looked up, and there came a wan smile over her thin, closely-shut lips.
"Sit still, Baby Bunting, or you'll not get over the hills to-morrow," he said, and he offered Rigby a cigar from Rigby's own cigar-case, cutting off the end, handing it to him and lighting a match. "Gun out of action: record the error of the day," piped the thin precise voice of the Colonel from the head of the table.
Flags and bunting were everywhere, and a small platform, draped with red, white, and blue, had been erected for the receiving party. This consisted of King, Midget, and Rosy Posy in patriotic costume. King, as Uncle Sam, presented a funny figure with his white beaver hat, his long-tailed blue coat, and red and white striped trousers.
"You just ask your father over there if it isn't true." "'Tain't a healthy thing to speak overmuch about such happenings," said Bunting heavily. "If I was Joe," went on Mrs. Bunting, quickly pursuing her advantage, "I shouldn't want to talk about such horrid things when I comes in to have a quiet chat with friends.
"An argument against quiet pools, perhaps, Bunting; but scarcely against quiet people." "Don't know as to that, your honour much of a muchness. I have seen Master Aram, demure as he looks, start, and bite his lip, and change colour, and frown he has an ugly frown, I can tell ye when he thought no one nigh. A man who gets in a passion with himself may be soon out of temper with others.
They're just shouting out that there's been an arrest; but we don't take no stock of that. It's a Scotchman what gave himself up last night at Dorking. He'd been drinking, and was a-pitying of himself. Why, since this business began, there's been about twenty arrests, but they've all come to nothing." "Why, Ellen, you looks quite sad, quite disappointed," said Bunting jokingly.
But this man had a very excellent excuse for his breach of the rules, for the moment that he saw me he first took off his hat and waved it to attract my attention, and then flourished it in the direction of the look-out tree, glancing toward which I caught sight of the fluttering fragment of scarlet bunting which was the prearranged signal that a slaver had entered the lagoon and was approaching the factory!
Coming a little nearer with the view of inquiring for the family, her quick eye caught sight of something unexpected. A gust of wind blew up a corner of a linen lap-robe in the back of the wagon, and underneath it she distinctly saw the white-sheeted bundle that held the flag; the bundle with a tiny, tiny spot of red bunting peeping out at one corner.
In the morning paper which Bunting had begun taking again that very day three columns were devoted to the extraordinary mystery which was now beginning to be the one topic of talk all over London, West and East, North and South. Bunting had read out little bits about it while they ate their breakfast, and in spite of herself Mrs. Bunting had felt thrilled and excited.
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