eeping in the shade of the hedge, and shrinking into it when he saw any
one coming. Striking off when he neared the mill, he approached it
cautiously, and halted amidst some trees, whence he had a view of the
mill-door.

He was waiting for the boy, David Ripper. Fully convinced by the lad's
manner at the inquest that he had not told all he knew, but was keeping
something back in fear, Mr. Pike, for reasons of his own, resolved to
come at it if he could. He knew that the boy would be at work later than
usual that night, having been hindered in the afternoon.

Imagine yourself standing with your back to the river, reader, and take a
view of the premises as they face you. The cottage is a square building,
and has four good rooms on the ground floor. The miller's thrifty wife
generally locked all these rooms up if she went out, and carried the keys
away in her pocket. The parlour window was an ordinary sash-window, with
outside shutters; the kitchen window a small casement, protected by a
fixed net-work of strong wire. No one could get in or out, even when the
casement was open, without tearing this wire away, which would not be a
difficult matter to accomplish. On the left of the cottage, but to your
right as you face it, stands the mill, to which you ascend by steps. It
communicates inside with the upper floor of the cottage, which is used
as a store-room for corn; and from this store-room a flight of stairs
descends to the kitchen below. Another flight of stairs from this
store-room communicated with the open passage leading from the back-door
to the stable. This is all that need be said: and you may think it
superfluous to have described it at all: but it is not so.

The boy Ripper at length came forth. With a shuddering avoidance of the
water he came tearing along as one running from a ghost, and was darting
past the trees, when he found himself detained by an arm of great
strength. Mr. Pike clapped his other hand upon the boy's mouth, stifling
a howl of terror.

"Do you see this, Rip?" cried he.

Rip did see it. It was a pistol held rather inconveniently close to the
boy's breast. Rip dearly loved his life; but it nearly went out of him
then with fear.

"Now," said Pike, "I've come up to know about this business of Lord
Hartledon's, and I will know it, or leave you as dead as he is. And I'll
have you took up for murder, into the bargain," he rather illogically
continued, "as an accessory to the fact."

David R