because there was a hungry one at the gate:
"Why he wanted to begin on an old woman like
me." Peggy inquired what he had said to her.

"Oh, he begun where most of them ends, if
they get so far at all: axed me was I
comfortable here; if not, he knew a young man
wanted a nice tidy body to keep house for him."

Peggy pricked up her ears; and, in less than
a quarter of an hour, went for a box of lucifers
in a new bonnet and clean collar. She tripped
past the able mechanic very accidentally, and he
bestowed an admiring smile on her, but said
nothing, only smoked. However, on her return,
he contrived to detain her, and paid her a good
many compliments, which she took laughingly
and with no great appearance of believing them.
However, there is no going by that: compliments
sink: and within forty-eight hours the
able mechanic had become a hot wooer of Peggy
Black, always on the look-out for her day and
night, and telling her all about the lump of
money he had saved, and how he could double
his income, if he had but a counter, and tidy wife
behind it. Peggy gossiped in turn, and let out
amongst the rest that she had been turned off
once, just for answering a little sharply; and
now it was the other way; her master was a
trifle too civil at times.

"Who could help it?" said the able mechanic,
rapturously; and offered a pressing civility;
which Peggy fought off.

"Not so free, young man," said she. " Kissing
is the prologue to sin."

"How do you know that?" inquired the able
mechanic, with the sly humour of his class.

"It is a saying," replied Peggy, demurely.

At last, one night, Mr. Green the Detective,
for he it was, put his arm round his new
sweetheart's waist, and approached the subject nearest
his heart. He told her he had just found out
there was money enough to be made in one day
to set them up for life in a nice little shop; and
she could help in it.

After this inviting preamble he crept towards
the 14,000l. by artful questions; and soon
elicited that there had been high words between
Master and Mr. Alfred about that very sum;
she had listened at the door and heard. Taking
care to combine close courtship with cunning
interrogatories, he was soon enabled to write to
Dr. Sampson, and say that a servant of Mr.
Hardie's was down on him, and reported that he
carried a large pocket-book in his breast-pocket
by day; and she had found the dent of it under
his pillow at night; a stroke of observation very
creditable in an unprofessional female: on this
he had made it his business to meet Mr. Hardie
in broad day, and sure enough the pocket-book
was always there. He added, that the said
Haidie's face wore an expression, which he had
seen more than once when respectable parties
went in for felony: and altogether thought they
might now take out a warrant and proceed in
the regular way.

Sampson received this news with great
satisfaction: but was crippled by the interwoven
relations of the parties.

To arrest Mr. Hardie on a warrant would
entail a prosecution for felony, and separate
Jane and Edward for ever.

He telegraphed Green to meet him at the
station; and reached Barkington at eight that
very evening. Green and he proceeded to
Albion Villa, and there they held a long and
earnest consultation with Edward; and at last,
on certain conditions, Mr. Green and Edward
consented to act on Sampson's plan. Green,
by this time, knew all Mr. Hardie's out of
door habits; and assured them that at ten
o'clock he would walk up and down the
road for at least half an hour, the night being
dry. It wanted about a quarter to ten, when
Mrs. Dodd came down, and proposed supper to
the travellers. Sampson declined it for the
present; and said they had work to do at
eleven. Then, making the others a signal not
to disclose anything at present, he drew her
aside and asked after Julia.

Mrs. Dodd sighed:— " She goes from one
thing to another, but always returns to one
idea; that he is a victim, not a traitor."

"Well, tell her in one hour, the money shall
be in the house."

"The money! What does she care?"

"Well, say we shall know all about Alfred by
eleven o'clock."

"My dear friend, be prudent," said Mrs.
Dodd. "I feel alarmed; you were speaking
almost in a whisper when I came in."

"Y' are very obsairvant: but dawnt be
uneasy; we are three to one. Just go and comfort
Miss Julee with my message."

"Ah, that I will," she said.

She was no sooner gone than they all stole
out into the night, and a pitch dark night it
was; but Green had a powerful dark lantern
to use if necessary.

They waited, Green at the gate of Musgrove
Cottage, the other two a little way up the road.

Ten o'clock struck. Some minutes passed
without the expected signal from Green; and
Edward and Sampson began to shiver. For it
was very cold and dark, and in the next place
they were honest men going to take the law
into their own hands, and the law sometimes
calls that breaking the law. " Confound him!"
muttered Sampson: " if he does not soon come
I shall run away. It is bitterly cold."

Presently footsteps were heard approaching;
but no signal: it proved to be only a fellow in
a smock frock rolling home from the public-
house.

Just as his footsteps died away a low hoot
like a plaintive owl was heard, and they knew
their game was afoot.

Presently, tramp, tramp, came the slow and
stately march of him they had hunted down.

He came very slowly, like one lost in meditation:
and these amateur policemen's hearts beat
louder, and louder, as he drew nearer and nearer.

At last in the blackness of the night a shadowy
outline was visible: another tramp or two, it
was upon them.

Now the cautious Mr. Green had stipulated