olf Pike.

"Set upon!" exclaimed the clerk, looking swiftly in all directions for
the offender.

"I don't know what else you can call it, when a highway robber--a
murderer, if all tales be true--steals round upon you without warning,
and glares his eyes into yours," shrieked Mrs. Jones wrathfully. "And if
he wasn't barefoot, Gum, my eyes strangely deceived me. I'd have you and
Nancy take care of your throats."

She turned into the house, to the best parlour, where the clerk's wife
was sitting with a visitor, Mirrable. Mrs. Gum, when she found what the
commotion had been about, gave a sharp cry of terror, and shook from head
to foot.

"On our premises! Close to our house! That dreadful man! Oh, Lydia, don't
you think you were mistaken?"

"Mistaken!" retorted Mrs. Jones. "That wild face isn't one to be
mistaken: I should like to see its fellow in Calne. Why Lord Hartledon
don't have him taken up on suspicion of that murder, is odd to me."

"You'd better hold your tongue about that suspicion," interposed
Mirrable. "I have cautioned you before, _I_ shouldn't like to breathe
a word against a desperate man; I should go about in fear that he might
hear of it, and revenge himself."

In came the clerk. "I don't see a sign of any one about," he said; "and
I'm sure whoever it was could not have had time to get away. You must
have been mistaken, Mrs. Jones."

"Mistaken in what, pray?"

"That any man was there. You got confused, and fancied it, perhaps. As to
Pike, he'd never dare come on my premises, whether by night or day. What
were you doing at the window?"

"Listening," defiantly replied Mrs. Jones. "And now I'll just tell out
what I've had in my head this long while, Mr. Gum, and know the reason of
Nancy's slighting me in the way she does. What secret has she and Mary
Mirrable got between them?"

"Secret?" repeated the clerk, whilst his wife gave a faint cry, and
Mirrable turned her calm face on Mrs. Jones. "Have they a secret?"

"Yes, they have," raved Mrs. Jones, giving vent to her long pent-up
emotion. "If they haven't, I'm blind and deaf. If I have come into your
house once during the past year and found Mrs. Mirrable in it, and the
two sitting and whispering, I've come ten times. This evening I came in
at dusk; I turned the handle of the door and peeped into the best
parlour, and there they were, nose and knees together, starting away
from each other as soon as they saw me, Nance giving one of her faint
cr