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 entered it and sat down to wait until it was full. Within a quarter of an hour all the seats were occupied. But even then the omnibus did not start, for the conductor, in the bullying manner of his class, demanded the fares before the journey began. The passengers, anxious to get home, produced their money and tendered the usual fare—a shilling each. With a volley of oaths the conductor declared that the fare that night was eighteenpence. The passengers refused to pay the extra sixpence and threatened to report the conductor to Shillibeer for extortion and foul language, if he did not start the omnibus at once.

"Right away, Charlie," the conductor shouted; but there was something in the way he uttered those three words which gave the coachman the tip what to do, for he drove off immediately, not towards London, but down a back street to a deserted part of Greenwich, where he pulled up.

Again the conductor demanded eighteenpence from each person, and some were disposed to pay it; but the people who were the first to enter the omnibus declined most emphatically to submit to the extortion, and prevailed upon their fellow-passengers to be equally firm. Soon some of them