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At first Caddles did not understand the import of these attentions. When
he did, he told the policemen not to be fools, and set off in great
strides that left them all behind. The bakers' shops had been in the
Harrow Road, and he went through canal London to St. John's Wood, and
sat down in a private garden there to pick his teeth and be speedily
assailed by another posse of constables.
"You lea' me alone," he growled, and slouched through the
gardens--spoiling several lawns and kicking down a fence or so, while
the energetic little policemen followed him up, some through the
gardens, some along the road in front of the houses. Here there were one
or two with guns, but they made no use of them. When he came out into
the Edgware Road there was a new note and a new movement in the crowd,
and a mounted policeman rode over his foot and got upset for his pains.
"
You lea' me alone," said Caddles, facing the breathless crowd. "I ain't
done anything to you." At that time he was unarmed, for he had left his
chalk chopper in Regent's Park. But now, poor wretch, he seems to have
felt the need of some weapon. He turned back towards the goods yard of
the Great Western Railway, wrenched up the standard of a tall arc light,
a formidable mace for him, and flung it over his shoulder. And finding
the police still turning up to pester him, he went back along the
Edgware Road, towards Cricklewood, and struck off sullenly to the north.
He wandered as far as Waltham, and then turned back westward and then
again towards London, and came by the cemeteries and over the crest of
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