By these marks the reader has already perceived that this gentleman has been presented to him before, but in a very different garb, which he had thought fit to assume for his own particular purposes on the preceding night, and now he sat in the cottage of Stephen Gimlet the poacher, judging it expedient to keep himself at a distance from the peopled haunts of man, during the bright and bustling day at least. At night he proposed to betake himself to the inn which had been mentioned in his conversation with the housekeeper; but after his pleasant and hopeful conversation with his father, he had ridden straight to the dwelling of his companion, Wolf, where on the preceding day his portmantles had been left after they had arranged their plans; and having stabled his horse in a shed at the back of the building, had passed the heavy hours of darkness partly in bitter meditations, and partly in conversation with his comrade. Sleep could hardly be said to have visited his eyelids, for though after he cast himself down to rest he had dozed from time to time, yet agitating thoughts continually returned and deprived him of all real repose. At an early hour of the morning, and while it was still dark, Ste Gimlet had gone out, as was his wont, and rising with the first rays of the sun, Henry Wittingham employed himself in dressing with scrupulous care, and then filled up about half an hour more in making a black patch to hide his disfigured eye, out of an old silk handkerchief. When this was accomplished, wanting something or another to tie this covering in its right place, he looked round the room, but in vain. Leather straps, dog-collars, rat-traps, brass wire, would none of them do, and although near the nets there was lying a ball of whip-cord, he thought that such a decoration as a string made with that material would but ill accord with the rest of his habiliments. He therefore walked across the little passage to the next room, and lifted the coarse wooden latch of the door. He found the door locked, however, and muttering to himself, "D--n the fellow, did he think I would steal any thing?" he was turning away, when a small sweet voice from within exclaimed, "I'm ready, daddy, I've got my stockings on." "Oh, he's locked the child in, that's it," said Henry Wittingham to himself, and then raising his voice, he said, "Your daddy's not come back, Charley, so lie still and be quiet." Then returning to the next room, the brilliant thought struck him of cutting off the hem of the old silk handkerchief to make a string for the black patch, which task being accomplished, and all complete, he sat down and thought.