ee times a week to look
over the place and make sure that everything was all right. On this
morning, sir, after superintending the servants clearing up things, I
went outside the house to have a final look round, and to see that the
locks of the front and back gates were in good working order. I was going
to the back first, sir, but happening to glance about me as I walked
round the house, I saw the young woman that Sir Horace had ordered me to
show out of the house the night before he went to Scotland, peering out
from behind one of the fir trees of the plantation in front of the house.
As soon as she saw that I saw her she beckoned to me.

"I would not have taken any notice of her, only I didn't want the women
servants to see her. Sir Horace, I knew, would not have liked that. So I
went across to her. I asked her what she wanted, and I told her it was no
use her wanting to see Sir Horace, for he had gone to Scotland. 'I don't
want to see him,' she said, as impudent as brass. 'It's you I want to
see, Field or Hill or whatever you call yourself now.' It gave me quite a
turn, I assure you, to find that this young woman knew my secret, and I
turned round apprehensive-like, to make sure that none of the servants
had heard her. She noticed me and she laughed. 'It's all right, Hill,'
she said. 'I'm not going to tell on you. I've just brought you a message
from an old friend--Fred Birchill--he wants to see you to-night at this
address.' And with that she put a bit of paper into my hand. I was so
upset and excited that I said I'd be there, and she went away.

"This Fred Birchill was a man I'd met in prison, and he was in the cell
next to me. How he'd got on my tracks I had no idea, but I seemed to see
all my new life falling to pieces now he knew. I'd tried to run straight
since I served my sentence, and I knew Sir Horace would stand to me, but
he couldn't afford to have any scandal about it, and I knew that if there
was any possibility of my past becoming known I should have to leave his
employ. And then there was my poor wife and child, and this little
business, sir. Nothing was known about my past here. So I determined to
go and see this Birchill, sir. The address she had given me was in
Westminster, and, as my time was practically my own when Sir Horace
wasn't home, I went down that same evening, and when I got up the flight
of stairs and knocked at the door it was a woman's voice that said 'Come
in,' I thought I recognise