. Luckily for our purpose,
the country theaters are in a bad way. Excepting the large cities,
hardly one of them is open, and we can keep our eye on them, with little
expense and less difficulty.

"These are the steps which I think it needful to take at present. If you
are of another opinion, you have only to give me your directions, and I
will carefully attend to the same. I don't by any means despair of our
finding the young lady and bringing her back to her friends safe and
well. Please to tell them so; and allow me to subscribe myself, yours
respectfully,

"ABRAHAM BULMER."

V.

_Anonymous Letter addressed to Mr. Pendril._

"SIR--A word to the wise. The friends of a certain young lady are
wasting time and money to no purpose. Your confidential clerk and your
detective policeman are looking for a needle in a bottle of hay. This is
the ninth of October, and they have not found her yet: they will as soon
find the Northwest Passage. Call your dogs off; and you may hear of the
young lady's safety under her own hand. The longer you look for her, the
longer she will remain, what she is now--lost."

[The preceding letter is thus indorsed, in Mr. Pendril's handwriting:
"No apparent means of tracing the inclosed to its source. Post-mark,
'Charing Cross.' Stationer's stamp cut off the inside of the envelope.
Handwriting, probably a man's, in disguise. Writer, whoever he is,
correctly informed. No further trace of the younger Miss Vanstone
discovered yet."]

THE SECOND SCENE.

SKELDERGATE, YORK.

CHAPTER I.

IN that part of the city of York which is situated on the western bank
of the Ouse there is a narrow street, called Skeldergate, running nearly
north and south, parallel with the course of the river. The postern by
which Skeldergate was formerly approached no longer exists; and the few
old houses left in the street are disguised in melancholy modern
costume of whitewash and cement. Shops of the smaller and poorer order,
intermixed here and there with dingy warehouses and joyless private
residences of red brick, compose the present a spect of Skeldergate. On
the river-side the houses are separated at intervals by lanes running
down to the water, and disclosing lonely little plots of open ground,
with the masts of sailing-barges rising beyond. At its southward
extremity the street ceases on a sudden, and the broad flow of the Ouse,
the trees, the meadows, the public-walk on one bank and the towing-pa