On Sat­urday the fifth of Feb­ru­ary the boy came back to the river wall with a ja­panned box under his arm.

He had been four af­ter­noons at Mr. Sass’s in Bloomsbury, draw­ing a plaster foot, and on the Sat­urday he was a sta­tioner’s boy again, with cop­ies for Paper Build­ings and an an­swer to wait for; but he was not the same boy. Mr. Kinross saw it from the second bench be­fore the boy had reached the wall. He walked dif­fer­ently. He walked like some­body who had been told, by people who knew, that he was worth the trouble of teach­ing; and he came down the east­ern walk in the frost, and touched his hat to the second bench, and went pink, and then did a thing he had never done. Instead of stop­ping at the wall, he came straight on to the bench.

“If you please, sir. I’ve done one in col­our.”

It was the gardener again, scowl­ing at his walk; but the gardener was in col­our now, and the cold had got into him. The boy had done him on a spoilt sheet torn to the size of his hand, lay­ing each touch of col­our down once, be­side the last, and leav­ing it there, as though he could not spare the paint to go back. The old man’s face was made of light red and white and umber, and the bare tree over him of a few dark dashes, and the sky of three broad strokes that looked grey until one looked again, and then were blue and black and white, side by side.

Mr. Kinross looked at it for a long time.

“You did not learn that at Mr. Sass’s.”

“No, sir. They only give us chalk there, and the foot.” The boy con­sidered the foot, with re­spect. “I’ve done it nine times. Mr. Sass came by me three times and never said a word, and the big boys say that’s the most he ever says. I did this at home, on the stair, by the win­dow.” He touched the corner of the box. “With these.”

“Mr. Sass did not give you those.”

“No, sir. Some­body in par­tic­u­lar did.”

He said it with great ex­act­ness, as he said everything; and Mr. Kinross, who had given his at­tor­ney that phrase the other way about three weeks be­fore, heard it come back to him from the far side, and could not tell whether the boy meant any­thing by it. He de­cided that the boy was only being exact. He did not know that the boy had been nearly sure, since the last Thursday in Janu­ary, whom he was talk­ing to; and that the boy, who would not for the world have let him be thanked for a thing he had not given, had been care­ful to get it right.

Mr. Kinross wished very much to know who the some­body was, and could not ask, for the same reason that he could ask nobody any­thing that winter. He said that the some­body had chosen well; and the boy said, “Yes, sir,” with such en­tire con­vic­tion that Mr. Kinross was a little jeal­ous of who­ever it was, and was amused at him­self for it, and gave the gardener back.

The boy put him into the book. And as he turned the leaves to find his place, his hand went out near the end, as it had in Janu­ary, and turned two to­gether.

Mr. Kinross had seen him do it once be­fore, and had not asked, and had meant never to ask. But he had sat on that bench for five weeks wait­ing for some­body who had once stood at that wall, and the boy drew at the wall every af­ter­noon of his life; and the ques­tion was out be­fore he could stop it, quietly, as one asks a thing that does not mat­ter.

“Is it a lady?”

The boy stood quite still, with his hand flat on the book.

“Nobody in par­tic­u­lar, sir,” he said. “I made her up.”

He said it to the gen­tle­man’s boots. He went scar­let from his col­lar to his hair, and he did not take his hand off the book.

Mr. Kinross had kept cham­bers in the Temple for six years, which is long enough to learn what a lie sounds like, and he knew what kind of lie this was. It had not been told to hide a fault. It had been told to keep some­body. And it had been told in the very words he had given Mr. Merridew, to keep him­self out of a kind­ness; the boy must

have had them out of an at­tor­ney’s let­ter, and was using them, as he had, to put a thing out of reach. Twice in a quarter of an hour the boy had handed him back his own phrase. Per­haps the boy knew whom he was talk­ing to; if he did, neither of them could say so. There was one way to have the leaf: to let the boy know for cer­tain whom he was ob­liged to, and ask again. That was the one thing he had paid not to do.

He said, “I beg your par­don, Mr. Tucker. That was not my busi­ness,” and looked at the river; and after a mo­ment the boy breathed again, and took his hand off the book.

At four the boy went away up the walk at a run, and at the corner of the walk he stopped and turned round, as he al­ways did. Mr. Kinross raised his hand. He had never done it be­fore, and the boy stood so long look­ing at it that he was very nearly late for Paper Build­ings.

He had lied to the gen­tle­man. He had kept a thing from Miss Lydiard in Janu­ary, by not say­ing it, and that had not felt like lying; but this had been a lie out loud, with words in it, to a gen­tle­man who had called him Mis­ter, and who had once asked him Would you? He car­ried it up to Paper Build­ings and all the way home, and it was heav­ier than the cop­ies. He would have given any­thing in the world, ex­cept the leaf, to take it back.

He could not take it back. On the Monday the frost came down hard again; and he came into the garden with the af­ter­noon cop­ies ten minutes be­fore three, when there was nobody in it but the gardener, and went up to Paper Build­ings by way of the second bench. When Mr. Kinross came down at three, every bench in the garden was white ex­cept his own, which had been wiped from end to end, roughly, as if with a sleeve, and was only wet.

Mr. Kinross sup­posed that it was the gardener, and thought the bet­ter of the gardener, who had never be­fore shown any sign of know­ing that he was there. The boy came down from Paper Build­ings at half past three and stood at the wall with his back to the bench, draw­ing, and kept his right arm close against his side, where the cuff of his coat was wet through and be­gin­ning to stiffen in the cold. He did it on every hard af­ter­noon that he was in the Temple for the rest of that winter; and Mr. Kinross went on think­ing bet­ter of the gardener.

*  *  *  *  *

Lady Ardoch had come south with a plan, and it was not going well.

The plan was Miss Lauder, who had a com­plex­ion and her father’s acres and a great deal of pa­tience, and who had been brought four hun­dred miles from Edin­burgh in the depth of winter

to be in the same house as Mr. Kinross. Mr. Kinross was never in it. He break­fas­ted early, which was new, and went out, which was not; he came home at dark, sat through din­ner with an air of cour­teous ab­sence, and answered when he was spoken to, gen­er­ally cor­rectly. Miss Lauder said that he was very civil. Lady Ardoch said that he had been civil since he was one-and-twenty, and that she had not brought Miss Lauder from Edin­burgh to be treated civilly.

“You have the look,” she said to him on the Sunday, across the tea-table, “of your uncle, when he was at the bar and had a cause he could not win. He would sit and look at the fire as if it owed him money. You look at books the same way; you had it from him. Is there some­body?”

“There is the King, ma’am.”

“The King was mad for nine years be­fore he died, and you never looked at a fire for him in your life. I did not ask about the King.” Lady Ardoch put down the teapot. “Nath­aniel, I have known you since you were in pet­ti­coats. You look at books, and at me when I have said some­thing fool­ish. I have never once seen you look at a fire. I should like to know what is in it.”

He did not tell her. He could not have told her, if he had wished to, in any terms she would have understood: that he was look­ing for a young woman whose name he did not know, and whose face he did, by walk­ing down every court in Fleet Street in turn, like a man tak­ing an in­vent­ory. His aunt would have sent for a doc­tor. He said that it was a very good fire, and went to bed.

*  *  *  *  *

Clem­ency wrote the el­ev­enth num­ber in the first week of Feb­ru­ary, in the back room, in her slate-col­oured gown, with the Warden’s sen­tence on the desk be­side her where she could see it.

She had read it until she knew it by heart: the Warden going down into the town, street by street, ask­ing no man any­thing, and look­ing into every door like one who has lost a thing whose name he does not know, and means to find it by the shape. At about the fifth read­ing she had de­cided that she could not tell whom he was look­ing for. At about the tenth she had de­cided that it did not sig­nify, since who­ever it was, it was she; and she did not choose to be found by the shape. She had not de­cided whether she wanted him to stop.

She answered him on the Sunday night. She put it in the middle of the num­ber, at break­fast in Mount Street, where Mr. Mortimer was read­ing the ad­vert­ise­ments in the Morn­ing Post aloud, as he did every morn­ing with­out being asked; and he came upon one that puzzled him, and read it out twice:

“It must be a dog,” said Mr. Mortimer.

“Nobody ad­vert­ises a dog with­out a re­ward,” said Mrs. Mortimer; and Miss Mortimer poured out the tea, and said noth­ing whatever.

Clem­ency read it over at mid­night and laughed aloud, and put her hand over her mouth, so as not to wake her mother; and then sat for a long time with the candle and was not laugh­ing at all. She did not know whether she had writ­ten it to make him stop, or to let him know that she had seen him look. She was hon­est enough to sus­pect that it was the second. A woman who does not wish to be found does not ad­vert­ise.

She let it stand. It was the best thing in the num­ber.

That af­ter­noon, on the stair below, Toby had painted Mrs. Dunning by the light of the land­ing win­dow, with the ja­panned box open on the step be­side him. He had done her cheeks in light red and white, and not a scrap of crim­son, and Mrs. Dunning had never looked so well in her life; and he had given her, Clem­ency saw as she went down, the face of a woman who has just been told a thing she knew already, and is glad of it.

“You said faces aren’t the col­our people think, miss,” he said, with­out look­ing up. “They aren’t. I looked.”

*  *  *  *  *

Mr. Kinross came to Salisbury Court on Thursday the tenth of Feb­ru­ary, at a quarter to nine in the morn­ing.

He had meant to come on the last day of Janu­ary. Then the her­alds had taken the Monday, and his aunt the Wed­nes­day, and the March Albemarle, which he was get­ting out him­self with Mr. Ogle, the bet­ter part of every morn­ing since; and it was the tenth be­fore he stood in Fleet Street again, at the top of the next turn­ing east of Water Lane.

He knew what day it was. On the tenth of every month she went up Bald­win’s stairs in Paternoster Row with a num­ber under her cloak, at an hour he could have named within a quarter; and he had settled with him­self in Janu­ary that Paternoster Row on the tenth was the one place in Lon­don where he would not stand and wait for her. He had not chosen the day. The order of the streets had chosen it. He thought of turn­ing back; but it seemed to him more hon­est to keep to the order than to the cal­en­dar, and he went down the court, slowly, look­ing at doors.

It was a nar­row street, run­ning down from Fleet Street to­wards the

river, and at the bot­tom it opened into a little square of tall old houses round a pump, with a print­ing-press going some­where be­hind a ground-floor win­dow, so that the whole square thumped gently, like a heart. He came out of the court into it, in the frost; and he had taken three steps when a door opened on the far side, under a board that said DUN­NING, LAW-STA­TIONER, and out came the boy.

He had a par­cel of cop­ies under one arm, and he came out talk­ing over his shoulder to some­body in the shop, and laugh­ing; and a woman’s voice, warm and ex­as­per­ated, fol­lowed him out into the square to tell him to but­ton his coat. He buttoned it, which he would not have done for any­body else, and went off across the square at a run, to­wards the far corner, with­out once look­ing to­wards Salisbury Court.

Mr. Kinross stepped back into the mouth of the court.

He had told an at­tor­ney that he did not wish to know the mas­ter’s name, or where the boy lived, or how he did, or whether he was grate­ful; and now he knew three of the four, with­out any­body’s telling him, be­cause he had walked down a street to look for some­body else. The mas­ter’s name was Dunning. The boy lived in this square. And he did well: he was laughed at kindly by a woman in a shop, and buttoned his coat when he was told. That was more than Mr. Kinross had paid for, and more than he had any right to know.

Then an­other thought came to him, stand­ing in the mouth of the court.

The boy drew at the river wall, where she had stood in August. He kept one leaf in his book that he would not show, and he had lied, scar­let to the hair, to keep it. And he lived here, a quarter of a mile from the wall, within a walk of the Temple, which was where Mr. Kinross had reasoned at New Year that she must live. There were twenty win­dows round that pump. Behind any one of them⁠—

He did not let it fin­ish. If she lived in this square, he would be look­ing for her through the boy, who had lied to him on the Sat­urday to keep her out of his reach. That was not quite hon­est, since it was the order of the streets that had brought him here, and not the boy; he knew it, and let the ar­gu­ment stand. He would not search the boy’s square for her.

There was a plainer reason, too. The win­dow of the shop under the board had a man be­hind it, look­ing out at the frost; and that man had writ­ten to Lin­coln’s Inn in Janu­ary to ask who the gen­tle­man was, and been told noth­ing. Mr. Merridew had writ­ten to say so, as a thing his cli­ent ought to know. A gen­tle­man in a good coat who stood about the square look­ing up at the

win­dows would be the an­swer to Mr. Dunning’s ques­tion be­fore the morn­ing was out; and by night the boy would know for cer­tain whom he was ob­liged to; and a boy who knows whom he is ob­liged to is never quite free again. Mr. Kinross’s uncle had taken him to see the Hog­ar­ths when he was twelve, and had never once in his life re­minded him of it. It was the best thing any­body had ever done for him, and he had been grown be­fore he understood that it had been done on pur­pose.

So he turned round in the mouth of Salisbury Court, and went back up into Fleet Street, and on to­wards the next turn­ing east; and he left the little square where the boy lived out of his in­vent­ory, as a man leaves out one room of his own house.

He went back to King’s Bench Walk at noon and wrote the six­teenth num­ber of the Warden, which was due that day and which he had been put­ting off for a week. It went faster than any num­ber he had writ­ten since the sum­mer. A boy came into it whom he had not ex­pec­ted, and he let him in. He saw well enough what he was doing. At a quarter to nine he had turned his back on a square so that a boy should not know whom he was ob­liged to; at noon he gave the Warden a boy, and a name to call him by, and took him up the stair into his ser­vice. The Warden might keep him. Mr. Kinross might not; and he wrote it as fast as he could, be­cause it was the only way he had. He had re­fused a thought that morn­ing, in the mouth of Salisbury Court, about who else might live in that square; it did not come back while he wrote.

*  *  *  *  *

Clem­ency had gone up Salisbury Court a quarter of an hour be­fore him, with the el­ev­enth num­ber under her cloak, and turned east into Fleet Street while he was still in the Strand; and at a quarter to nine, while he stood in the mouth of the court, she was going up Bald­win’s stairs in Paternoster Row.

There was nobody in the door of the Chapter. Mr. Radcliffe, when she asked, told her why, with no ex­pres­sion at all, which in Mr. Radcliffe did duty for a smile. Mr. Hindley was up­stairs in the Chapter at that mo­ment, by spe­cial in­vit­a­tion, at break­fast with two of Bald­win’s part­ners, dis­cuss­ing the ad­vert­ising of Man­chester cot­ton goods in the pages of the Lon­don. He would be dis­cuss­ing it, Mr. Radcliffe thought, until el­even. The part­ners had been told that he was the most con­sid­er­able man in the Lan­ca­shire trade, and were very anxious to hear him on fus­tian.

“I said that I would give the Chapter some­thing else to look at,” said Mr. Radcliffe, count­ing out the twelve guineas. “I have given it fus­tian. To the Author, on de­liv­ery.” He shut the

drawer. “You may use the front door this month, madam.”

Fus­tian had been her father’s trade. She did not say so. She used the front door, and walked home by Ludgate Hill and Fleet Street in the frost, with the twelve guineas in her glove, and turned down Salisbury Court be­fore ten; and the court was empty, and so was the square, ex­cept for the pump and the press, and nobody had been there at all.

*  *  *  *  *

They bur­ied the old King at Wind­sor on the night of the six­teenth, by torch­light. Lon­don put up its shut­ters for the day, and the bells tolled at in­ter­vals until dark, and Kit wore his crape band to the Temple and back.

A week later, on Wed­nes­day the twenty-third, Lady Ardoch gave a small din­ner in Gros­venor Square: eight at table, in black, for Miss Lauder and her father and four people who did not mat­ter. When the ladies had gone up, Mr. Kinross went to the win­dow of the din­ing-room, to get away from Miss Lauder’s father on the sub­ject of drain­age, and saw that some­body was watch­ing the square.

He would not have seen it at Christ­mas. He had spent seven weeks since then watch­ing doors, and he knew what a man looks like who is doing it; and there were two of them in Gros­venor Square that night, in frieze coats, one at the rail­ings of the garden and one at a corner, who had been there, he thought, when he came home at dusk. They were not watch­ing his house. They were watch­ing Lord Harrowby’s, on the far side of the square, where the Cab­inet was to dine that even­ing, as one of the news­pa­pers had said; and the front of the house was very quiet for a house that ex­pec­ted the Cab­inet.

Next door to it there was a din­ner at the Archbishop of York’s, and car­riages were com­ing and going under the lamps. Mr. Kinross watched the two men watch them. Presently one of the men went off at a run to­wards Oxford Street. Mr. Kinross thought it odd, and then thought no more of it, be­cause Miss Lauder’s father had come to the win­dow to go on about drain­age, and his aunt was send­ing down to say that there was tea.

At ten the square was quiet. In the morn­ing it was in every news­pa­per in Lon­don.

A band of men had meant to come into Gros­venor Square that even­ing, while the Cab­inet sat at din­ner at Lord Harrowby’s, and murder them all at table, and carry off two of their heads in a bag. They had been wait­ing in a hayloft in Cato Street, off the Edg­ware Road, less than a mile away, for word from their watch­ers in the square. The

din­ner had been put off in secret, be­cause the Gov­ern­ment had known of the plot all along, from some­body in­side it; and be­fore the plot­ters could set out, the Bow Street of­ficers had gone up the lad­der into the loft, and one of the of­ficers had been run through with a sword. Some of the plot­ters were taken there and then, and the rest were being hunted all over Lon­don.

Lady Ardoch read it at break­fast, in her bed, and sent for her nephew.

“They meant to murder the whole Cab­inet,” she said, “across this square, while I was giv­ing a din­ner within a stone’s throw of them; and I had noth­ing on the table but a tur­key and a fri­cas­see. Nath­aniel, I shall never be able to tell any­body.”

The March Albemarle was to go to press that af­ter­noon. Mr. Ogle came to Gros­venor Square at ten with the last sheet, and with a para­graph from Mr. Wray to go at the foot of it, writ­ten overnight in a fine heat. The knives of Cato Street, Mr. Wray said, had been sharpened in Paternoster Row, by the Whig maga­zines and their comic writers, who had taught the lower or­ders to laugh at their bet­ters; and he named the Ludgate, which had stopped in Janu­ary and could not an­swer. He was care­ful not to name the Mortimers; nobody who read the para­graph could have sup­posed he meant any­thing else.

Mr. Kinross read it twice, and held the press.

Mr. Bal­dock had once held his press to put a page in. Mr. Kinross held his to take one out. He kept it until even­ing, while Mr. Ogle sat in the lib­rary and looked at the clock; and then he struck out Mr. Wray’s para­graph, and put in six lines of his own, which said what had happened in Cato Street and in Gros­venor Square, and that an of­ficer had been killed in the doing of his duty, and noth­ing else at all.

“Mr. Wray will say that we are soft on the Rad­ic­als, sir,” said Mr. Ogle.

“Mr. Wray may say what he likes,” said Mr. Kinross, “about a maga­zine that can an­swer him.”

When Mr. Ogle had gone, he went to the win­dow again and looked out at the square under the lamps. The men in frieze coats were gone. He thought of them stand­ing at the rail­ings for a whole day and the half of a night, watch­ing a door be­hind which noth­ing was ever going to hap­pen, and tak­ing the car­riages at the wrong house for the thing they were wait­ing for; and the thought that he had re­fused in the mouth of Salisbury Court came back to him, and stood at the rail­ings, and would not go away.

On the Tues­day, which was the twenty-ninth, Lady Ardoch ob­served at break­fast that it was leap year, when a lady might speak first, by an old law of Scot­land, and that this was the very

day that made it so; and looked at Miss Lauder. Miss Lauder said that she had never heard of it. Mr. Kinross said that it had been a joke for as long as any­one could say, and that it was not a law but a story; and went east, to fin­ish the south side of Fleet Street.

There was not much of it left: the pas­sages by St. Bride’s, and Bride Lane, and the courts that ran down be­hind them to­wards Bridge Street. In Janu­ary, White­friars had taken him for a bailiff. It was said in the courts that the Gov­ern­ment had had some­body among the plot­ters from the first, who went about with them and asked noth­ing and listened to everything; and a gen­tle­man who walked down every court in turn, look­ing at doors and ask­ing nobody any­thing, was some­thing worse than a bailiff in the last week of Feb­ru­ary. A woman in Bride Lane took her child in­doors when she saw him com­ing, and shut the door. A man at the bot­tom of a court said loudly to his neigh­bour that they had had enough of that sort since Wed­nes­day. Mr. Kinross went on to the end of the south side, be­cause he had said he would, and there was noth­ing at the end of it. There was one square on it that he had not looked into.

*  *  *  *  *

The two num­bers came out on the same morn­ing, the first of March, which was a Wed­nes­day. They had both been handed in on the tenth of Feb­ru­ary, one in Paternoster Row and one in Albemarle Street; and neither of the two people who wrote them knew what was in the other.

Mr. Kinross bought the Lon­don at the book­seller’s in Pic­ca­dilly, as he had in Feb­ru­ary, on his way east; and he opened it at the counter, at the Mortimers, and read the ad­vert­ise­ment stand­ing there, with the young man wait­ing for his half-crown.

It was an an­swer. It was the first she had made him since Janu­ary, and she had made it in the Warden’s own words: a thing whose name was not known, looked for by the shape. He had writ­ten that sen­tence for one reader, and she had read it. One writer had answered an­other, across two maga­zines, as the whole town might watch them do and never know it. She was an­swer­ing the Warden. She did not know whose the Warden was; he was still sure of that.

He paid the young man, and went out into Pic­ca­dilly with the Lon­don under his arm, and con­sidered it as he walked, as he would have con­sidered a clause. It was not a re­fusal. A woman who means to re­fuse does not give a page of her num­ber to it, with a joke about a dog. But it was a re­quest; and it was the first thing she had ever asked of him, though she had no no­tion whom she was ask­ing. He could give

it her. The south side of Fleet Street was done, and the courts thought him a spy, and there was noth­ing left of the search but ask­ing, which he had never done and would not. He would look no fur­ther.

He would keep the second bench, all the same. That was not look­ing. That was wait­ing; and the whole of the law turned on it.

He did not know that he had obeyed her already, in the one place that mattered, be­fore she had asked it of him in print.

*  *  *  *  *

Kit brought both num­bers into Salisbury Square that even­ing, and read the el­ev­enth num­ber of the Mortimers aloud, and laughed at the ad­vert­ise­ment until he had to sit down. Mr. Mortimer was quite right, he said: it was a dog, and the Author had lost it, and was very glad. Lucy said that she thought it was a lover.

Mrs. Lydiard put down the cuff.

“It is neither,” she said. “It is some­body who has been looked for, and is not yet sure she minds.”

“She?” said Kit. “The Author’s a man, Mama. Pel­ham says so.”

“Then he is a man who has been looked for,” said Mrs. Lydiard, “and is not sure he minds”; and she took up the cuff again. She did not look at her elder daugh­ter. That was worse.

When they had gone to bed, Clem­ency took the Albemarle into the back room and read the six­teenth num­ber of the Warden.

The Warden was at Lud­low still, and he had gone down the kit­chen stair again, as he had in Decem­ber, to look at the people who kept the castle. On the fourth page there was a boy.

She read it once, and put it down on the desk, and sat quite still.

There was one boy in Lon­don who drew the face of every­body he saw. There was one man in Lon­don who could have put him into the Warden. And she knew bet­ter than any­body how the Warden was writ­ten: about the tenth of the month, by a man who put into it, as she did, whatever he had been look­ing at.

He had looked at Toby, then. He had stood be­fore the boy’s faces, as the Warden stood be­fore the white­wash,

and found his own among them; he had asked the boy his name, and called him by it, very likely, with Mis­ter be­fore it, which nobody in Toby’s life had ever done. And some­where in the month be­tween, an at­tor­ney in Lin­coln’s Inn had writ­ten to Mr. Dunning, at the door below her own, that a gen­tle­man who would not give his name would pay for the boy to learn to draw.

Mr. Dunning had guessed an old gen­tle­man of the Inn. He was not old.

It had been his hand, then, that went into her purse ahead of her in Janu­ary, and took out the one thing in it she had wanted to give away. She had won the boy his place in a hall in Bloomsbury on the Monday, and he had paid for it from Lin­coln’s Inn on the Thursday, and neither had known that the other was there. They had crossed again, as their let­ters had crossed in the au­tumn. She did not mind it now. That alarmed her more than any­thing in the num­ber.

And the Warden’s boy car­ried his helm. She had seen that helm be­fore, on the stair, in a draw­ing of Toby’s: set down on a garden bench be­side a knight who had taken it off to read. Mr. Kinross had never seen that draw­ing. To him a helm was a thing that squires carry. To her it was the one Toby had drawn, picked up off the bench and car­ried up the stair be­hind him.

He’s never looked at me, Toby had said on Twelfth Night. It had been true then. It had stopped being true at some time since, and Toby had not told her; and she understood why the boy had come up the stair two at a time in Janu­ary with his face shin­ing, and stopped, and said some­thing else. He had been keep­ing it. She did not grudge it him. She had kept a great deal her­self.

The at­tor­ney had writ­ten to this door. Then the gen­tle­man knew where the boy lived; and if he knew that, he knew a square off Fleet Street with a pump in it, and a law-sta­tioner’s, and a stair. He did not know who lived two pair of stairs up. Or he knew, and had not come up them. She could not tell which.

She was wrong in her reas­on­ing, since he had for­bid­den any­body to tell him where the boy lived; and right in the fact, since the tenth of Feb­ru­ary.

She had told him that very morn­ing, in print, at twelve guineas, to look no fur­ther; and he had been at her door already, by the post, a month ago, to do a thing for some­body she loved, and had gone away again with­out a word, as the Warden would have done.

She had known for months what he wrote. She knew now what he did. It was a great deal worse, be­cause it could not be answered in a num­ber.

(To be con­tin­ued.)