house and to see him go up the stairs two steps at a
time whenever he had occasion to mount them for any purpose whatsoever.

It would not have needed any abnormally acute mind, any process of
subtle reasoning, to get at the secret of all this exuberance, this
perennial flow of high spirits; indeed, one had only to watch the letter
box at Number 204, Clarges Street, to get at the bottom of it instantly;
for twice a week the postman dropped into it a letter addressed in an
undoubtedly feminine "hand" to Captain Horatio Burbage, and invariably
postmarked "Lynhaven, Devon."

Dollops had made that discovery long ago and had put his conclusions
regarding it into the mournfully-uttered sentence: "A skirt's got him!"
But, after one violent pang of fierce and rending jealousy, was grateful
to that "skirt" for bringing happiness to the man he loved above all
other things upon earth and whose welfare was the dearest of his heart's
desires. Indeed, he grew, in time, to watch as eagerly for the coming of
those letters as did his master himself; and he could have shouted with
delight whenever he heard the postman's knock, and saw one of the
regulation blue-grey envelopes drop through the slit into the wire cage
on the door.

Cleek, too, was delighted when he saw them. It was nothing to him that
the notes they contained were of the briefest--mere records of the state
of the weather, the progress of his little lordship, the fact that Lady
Chepstow wished to be remembered and that the writer was well "and hoped
he, too, was." They were written by _her_--that was enough. He gave so
much that very little sufficed him in return; and the knowledge that he
had been in her mind for the five or ten minutes which it had taken to
write the few lines she sent him, made him exceedingly happy.

But she was not his only correspondent in these days--not even his most
frequent one. For a warm, strong friendship--first sown in those
ante-Derby days--had sprung up between Sir Henry Wilding and himself and
had deepened steadily into a warm feeling of comradeship and mutual
esteem. Frequent letters passed between them; and the bond of fellowship
had become so strong a thing that Sir Henry never came to town without
their meeting and dining together.

"Gad! you know, I can't bring myself to think of you as a
police-officer, old chap!" was the way Sir Henry put it on the day when
he first invited him to lunch with him at his club. "I'd about as soon