" "But surely madame la princesse must appreciate the police might be at a loss to know which housebreaker to arrest.

I will not believe all I am told; I will not believe that last night several men, without any precise orders, without any legal character whatever, merely National Guards, introduced themselves into peaceful families; waking the wife and children, and carrying off the husband as one carries off a housebreaker or an escaped convict.

Could she have talked so pleasantly to Selwyn?' His contemporaries certainly believed in his love for Newgatism; for when Walpole had caught a housebreaker in a neighbour's area, he immediately despatched a messenger to White's for the philo-criminalist, who was sure to be playing at the Club any time before daylight.

It happened that the drawer at the 'Chocolate-house' had been himself lately robbed, and therefore stole to George with fear and trembling, and muttered mysteriously to him, 'Mr. Walpole's compliments, and he has got a housebreaker for you.'

So the virtuous householder was rather more than unceremonious about yanking the princely housebreaker inside and lending him a foot to accelerate his return to the living-room; where Victor brought up, on all-fours again, in almost precisely the spot from which he had risen.