iquid, consoled
themselves with spirits and tobacco.

As they would leave the house very early in the morning, the child was
anxious to pay for their entertainment before they retired to bed. But
as she felt the necessity of concealing her little hoard from her
grandfather, and had to change the piece of gold, she took it secretly
from its place of concealment, and embraced an opportunity of following
the landlord when he went out of the room, and tendered it to him in
the little bar.

'Will you give me the change here, if you please?' said the child.

Mr James Groves was evidently surprised, and looked at the money, and
rang it, and looked at the child, and at the money again, as though he
had a mind to inquire how she came by it. The coin being genuine,
however, and changed at his house, he probably felt, like a wise
landlord, that it was no business of his. At any rate, he counted out
the change, and gave it her. The child was returning to the room where
they had passed the evening, when she fancied she saw a figure just
gliding in at the door. There was nothing but a long dark passage
between this door and the place where she had changed the money, and,
being very certain that no person had passed in or out while she stood
there, the thought struck her that she had been watched.

But by whom? When she re-entered the room, she found its inmates
exactly as she had left them. The stout fellow lay upon two chairs,
resting his head on his hand, and the squinting man reposed in a
similar attitude on the opposite side of the table. Between them sat
her grandfather, looking intently at the winner with a kind of hungry
admiration, and hanging upon his words as if he were some superior
being. She was puzzled for a moment, and looked round to see if any
else were there. No. Then she asked her grandfather in a whisper
whether anybody had left the room while she was absent. 'No,' he said,
'nobody.'

It must have been her fancy then; and yet it was strange, that, without
anything in her previous thoughts to lead to it, she should have
imagined this figure so very distinctly. She was still wondering and
thinking of it, when a girl came to light her to bed.

The old man took leave of the company at the same time, and they went
up stairs together. It was a great, rambling house, with dull
corridors and wide staircases which the flaring candles seemed to make
more gloomy. She left her grandfather in his chamber,