an turned back in an instant of his own accord.

"I dare say you are wanting to know why I did you this little turn, Mr.
Elster. I have been caught in corners myself before now; and if I can
help anybody to get out of them without trouble to myself, I'm willing to
do it. And to circumvent these law-sharks comes home to my spirit as
wholesome refreshment."

Mr. Pike finally departed. He took the lonely way, and only struck into
the high-road opposite his own domicile, the shed. Passing round it, he
hovered at its rude door--the one he had himself made, along with the
ruder window--and then, treading softly, he stepped to the low stile in
the hedge, which had for years made the boundary between the waste land
on which the shed stood and Clerk Gum's garden. Here he halted a minute,
looking all ways. Then he stepped over the stile, crouched down amongst
Mr. Gum's cabbages, got under shelter of the hedge, and so stole onwards,
until he came to an anchor at the kitchen-window, and laid his ear to the
shutter, just as it had recently been laid against the glass in the
dining-room of my Lord Hartledon.

That he had a propensity for prying into the private affairs of his
neighbours near and distant, there could be little doubt about. Mr. Pike,
however, was not destined on this one occasion to reap any substantial
reward. The kitchen appeared to be wrapped in perfect silence. Satisfying
himself as to this, he next took off his heavy shoes, stole past the back
door, and so round the clerk's house to the front. Very softly indeed
went he, creeping by the wall, and emerging at last round the angle, by
the window of the best parlour. Here, most excessively to Mr. Pike's
consternation, he came upon a lady doing exactly what he had come to
do--namely, stealthily listening at the window to anything there might be
to hear inside.

The shrill scream she gave when she found her face in contact with the
wild intruder, might have been heard over at Dr. Ashton's. Clerk Gum, who
had been quietly writing in his office, came out in haste, and recognized
Mrs. Jones, the wife of the surly porter at the station, and step-mother
to the troublesome young servant, Rebecca. Pike had totally disappeared.

Mrs. Jones, partly through fright, partly in anger arising from a
long-standing grievance, avowed the truth boldly: she had been listening
at the parlour-shutters ever since she went out of the house ten minutes
ago, and had been set upon by that w