ay with it for her own purposes,"
said the clerk. "I caught her just now with the door wide open. She's
trying to make acquaintance with the man Pike; that's what she's at."

"Oh, Gum!"

"Yes; it's all very well to say 'Oh, Gum!' but if you were below-stairs
looking after her, instead of dreaming up here, it might be better for
everyone. Let me once be certain about it, and off she goes the next
hour. A fine thing 'twould be some day for us to find her head smothered
in the kitchen purgatory, and the silver spoons gone; as will be the case
if any loose characters get in."

He was descending the stairs as he spoke the last sentence, delivered in
loud tones, probably for the benefit of Miss Rebecca Jones. And lest the
intelligent Protestant reader should fear he is being introduced to
unorthodox regions, it may be as well to mention that the "purgatory" in
Mr. Jabez Gum's kitchen consisted of an excavation, two feet square,
under the hearth, covered with a grating through which the ashes and
the small cinders fell; thereby enabling the economical housewife to
throw the larger ones on the fire again. Such wells or "purgatories," as
they are called, are common enough in the old-fashioned kitchens of
certain English districts.

Mrs. Gum, ready now, had been about to follow her husband; but his
suggestion--that the girl was watching an opportunity to make
acquaintance with their undesirable neighbour, Pike--struck her
motionless.

It seemed that she could never see this man without a shiver, or overcome
the fright experienced when she first met him. It was on a dark autumn
night. She was coming through the garden when she discerned, or thought
she discerned, a light in the abandoned shed. Thinking of fire, she
hastily crossed the stile that divided their garden from the waste land,
and ran to it. There she was confronted by what she took to be a
bear--but a bear that could talk; for he gruffly asked her who she was
and what she wanted. A black-haired, black-browed man, with a pipe
between his teeth, and one sinewy arm bared to the elbow.

How Mrs. Gum tore away and tumbled over the stile in her terror, and got
home again, she never knew. She supposed it to be a tramp, who had taken
shelter there for the night; but finding to her dismay that the tramp
stayed on, she had never overcome her fright from that hour to this.

Neither did her husband like the proximity of such a gentleman. They
caused securer bolts to be put