every appearance, and the meanest and most deserted eating-house
that I patronised soon became filled with a crowd of furtively
watching customers. I began to sympathise with the feeling of Royal
personages trying to do a little private shopping under the
unsparing scrutiny of an irrepressible public. And still, with all
this inarticulate shadowing, which weighed on my nerves almost worse
than open hostility would have done, no attempt was made to
interfere with my liberty. Later on I discovered the reason. At
the time of the murder on the lonely highway a series of important
bloodhound trials had been taking place in the near neighbourhood,
and some dozen and a half couples of trained animals had been put on
the track of the supposed murderer--on my track. One of our most
public-spirited London dailies had offered a princely prize to the
owner of the pair that should first track me down, and betting on
the chances of the respective competitors became rife throughout the
land. The dogs ranged far and wide over about thirteen counties,
and though my own movements had become by this time perfectly well-
known to police and public alike, the sporting instincts of the
nation stepped in to prevent my premature arrest. "Give the dogs a
chance," was the prevailing sentiment, whenever some ambitious local
constable wished to put an end to my drawn-out evasion of justice.
My final capture by the winning pair was not a very dramatic
episode, in fact, I'm not sure that they would have taken any notice
of me if I hadn't spoken to them and patted them, but the event gave
rise to an extraordinary amount of partisan excitement. The owner
of the pair who were next nearest up at the finish was an American,
and he lodged a protest on the ground that an otterhound had married
into the family of the winning pair six generations ago, and that
the prize had been offered to the first pair of bloodhounds to
capture the murderer, and that a dog that had 1/64th part of