The officer quite lost his temper, saying that he had
had men like us there before. We asked him to break the bag open, but he
declined to do so, and made himself very disagreeable, which caused my
brother to remark afterwards that we ought to have thrown him over the
parapet of the bridge into the river below, if only to cool his temper.
It would have pleased us to stay and fight the matter out, but we had a
friend meeting us at Buxton to accompany us on the last day's march
home, and were obliged to give in on that account; so we opened the bag,
and it was amusing to see the crestfallen appearance of the officer when
he saw the contents, and his fiery temperature almost fell below zero
when we told him we should report the matter to his chief. We heard in
the town that some of the squires on that side of Nottingham had been
troubled with poachers on their estates, and the police had orders to
examine all persons with suspicious-looking parcels coming into the
town by that road, whether by vehicles or on foot. About a fortnight
before our adventure the same policeman had stopped a man who was
carrying a similar bag to mine, and found in it a complete set of
housebreaker's tools.
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