sure,
and more drink along with it. One nail drives out another, you know, sir.
And if the young lady have thrown you hover----"

"Why, you damned, white-gilled, prying brute! you must have been reading
my correspondence," said Saxham thickly, as he lifted the tumbler to his
mouth.

Tait grinned. He could venture to tell his master, drunk, what he would
not have dared to tell him sober.

"No need for that, sir. I've come and gone between this house and Pont
Street too often not to know what was in the wind. Why, Captain Saxham was
there with her often and often when you never suspected...."

The tumbler fell from Saxham's hand, and struck the fender, and smashed
into a hundred glittering bits.

"Go!" said Tait's master, perfectly, suddenly, dangerously sober, and
pointing to the door. The man delayed to finish his sentence.

"While you were in Holloway, sir, and all through the Trial...."

The door, contrary to Tait's discreet, usual habit, had been left open. He
vanished through it with harlequin-like agility as a terrible, white-faced
black figure seemed to leap upon him....

"I've 'ad an escape for my life!" he said, having reached in a series of
bounds the safer regions below stairs.

"Of the Doctor?... Go on with your rubbishing nonsense!" said the cook.

"What did you go and do to upset 'im, pore dear?" demanded the housemaid,
who was more imaginative, and cherished the buddings of a romantic passion
for one who should be for ever nameless:

"Her at Pont Street has wrote to give 'im the go-by--that's what she've
done," said pale-faced Tait, wiping his dewy brow. "And seeing the Doctor
for the first time since I've been in his service a bit overtook with
liquor, and more free and easy like than customary--being a gentleman you
or me would 'esitate to take a liberty with in the ordinary way o'
things--I thought I'd let 'im know about the Goings On."

"Of them two...." interpolated the cook--"Her and the Captain?"

"Shameless, I call 'em!" exclaimed the incandescent housemaid as Tait
signified assent.

"'Aven't they kep' it dark, though!" wondered the cook.

"They're what I call," stated Tait, who had not quite got over the
desertion of the young woman he was to have married, and who had gone off
with somebody else, "a precious downy couple. And what I say is--it's a
Riddance!"

"How did 'e take it, pore dear?" gulped the housemaid.

"Like he's took everythink--that is, up to the present moment,"