`Yes,' cried Passepartout, warmly; `at the pagoda of Pillaji, where they were on the point of burning their victim.'

The judge stared with astonishment, and the priests were stupefied.

`What victim?' said Judge Obadiah. `Burn whom? In Bombay itself?'

`Bombay?' cried Passepartout.

`Certainly. We are not talking of the pagoda of Pillaji, but of the pagoda of Malabar Hill, at Bombay.'

`And as a proof,' added the clerk, `here are the desecrator's very shoes, which he left behind him.'

Whereupon he placed a pair of shoes on his desk.

`My shoes!' cried Passepartout, in his surprise permitting this imprudent exclamation to escape him.

The confusion of master and man, who had quite forgotten the affair at Bombay, for which they were now detained at Calcutta, may be imagined.

Fix, the detective, had foreseen the advantage which Passepartout's escapade gave him, and, delaying his departure for twelve hours, had consulted the priests of Malabar Hill. Knowing that the English authorities dealt very severely with this kind of misdemeanour, he promised them a goodly sum in damages, and sent them forward to Calcutta by the next train. Owing to the delay caused by the rescue of the young widow, Fix and the priests reached the Indian capital before Mr Fogg and his servants, the magistrates having been already warned by a despatch to arrest thgm should they arrive. Fix's disappointment when he learned that Phileas Fogg had not made his appearance in Calcutta, may be imagined. He made up his mind that the robber had stopped somewhere on the route and taken refuge in the southern provinces. For twenty-four hours Fix watched the station with feverish anxiety; at last he was rewarded by seeing Mr Fogg and Passepartout arrive, accompanied by a young woman, whose presence he was wholly at a loss to explain. He hastened for a policeman; and this was how the party came to be arrested and brought before Judge Obadiah.

Had Passepartout been a little less preoccupied, he would have espied the detective ensconced in a corner of the court-room, watching the proceedings with an interest easily understood; for the warrant had failed to reach him at Calcutta, as it had done at Bombay and Suez.

Judge Obadiah had unfortunately caught Passepartout's rash exclamation, which the poor fellow would have given the world to recall.

`The facts are admitted?' asked the judge.

`Admitted,' replied Mr Fogg, coldly.

`Inasmuch,' resumed the judge, `as the English law protects equally and sternly the religions of the Indian people, and as the man Passepartout has admitted that he violated the sacred pagoda of Malabar Hill, at Bombay, on the 20th of October, I condemn the said Passepartout to imprisonment for fifteen days and a fine of three hundred pounds.'

`Three hundred pounds!' cried Passepartout, startled at the largeness of the sum.

`Silence!' shouted the constable.

`And inasmuch,' continued the judge, `as it is not proved that the act was not done by the connivance of the master with the servant, and as the master in any case must be held responsible for the acts of