Nothing more was said for a while. Then suddenly, Bayliss, whose eyes were turned towards the bay, uttered an oath, and exclaimed, "We're a heap of fools, that's what we are, not to guess. Why, it must be Crawford, the new Crawford--not the Crawford that's dead and buried, but the one that's alive and had the gumption to marry the sickly widow for her money! There he is at the window with that girl I saw going into the house to-day." Bayliss stretched out his long lean arm, and pointed with his thin grimy hand over the canal towards Crawford's House, at one of the windows of which a man and woman could be seen looking out into the dark turbid waters of Crawford's Bay. CHAPTER II. CRAWFORD'S HOUSE. Crawford Street, into which the stranger and his uncouth conductor had turned, was a narrow, dingy, neglected blind lane. The end of it was formed of a brick wall, moss-grown and ragged. On the right hand side were gates and doors of idle wharves, whose rears abutted on the bay; on the left, a long low unbroken wall separating the roadway from a desolate waste, where rubbish might be shot, according to a dilapidated and half-illegible notice-board; but on the plot were only two small mounds of that dreary material, crowned with a few battered rusty iron and tin utensils of undeterminable use. In the street, which was a couple of hundred yards long, stood the only dwelling. Opposite the door Red Jim drew up, and, pointing, said, "That's Crawford's House. I belong to this neighourhood. I'm called after the place. My name is James Ford. I'm called after the place, same as a lord is called after a place. They found me twenty-nine years ago on the tow-path. Nobody wanted me much then or since. Maybe you're the new Mr. Crawford, and, like me, called after the place too?" He spoke in a tone of curiosity. At the question, his companion started, looking at Red Jim out of a pair of keen, quick, furtive eyes. "I told you I would pay you for showing me the place. Here's sixpence. If you want any information of me, you'll have to pay me for it. If you really care to know my name, I'll tell it to you for that sixpence." The stranger laughed a short sharp laugh, handed Red Jim the coin, and kept his hand outstretched as if to take it back. Jim turned on his heel, and slunk away muttering. The stranger knocked with his fist on the door, from which the knocker was missing. The panels had originally been painted a grass-green, now faded down to the sober hue of the sea. The door was opened by a tall slender girl, whose golden-brown hair was flying in wild confusion over her white forehead and red cheeks, and across her blue eyes, in which, as in the hair, flashed a glint of gold. She smiled and laughed apologetically, and thrust her floating hair back from her face with both her hands.