The flashes followed each other at intervals of about a minute. I had witnessed three or four when suddenly I gave a start, and an exclamation broke involuntarily from my lips. The last flash had revealed to me the figures of two men in the act of climbing over the garden-wall. One of the men was a stranger to me; but in the other, instantaneous as was the revelation, I recognised the somewhat peculiar face and figure of a man named Dethel, whom my brother had employed temporarily during the last week or two in the garden, our regular man being laid up at the time with rheumatism. There was something in the looks of the man in question which had set me against him from the first; but if we were all to be judged by our looks alone, what would become of us! For aught I knew to the contrary, Dethel might be an honest, hard-working fellow, with a wife and children dependent on him; but for all that, on the days he was working for us I carefully refrained from going into the garden. And now, here was this man, and another with him, effecting a surreptitious entry of the premises at one o’clock in the morning! Such a proceeding could have but one end in view. Two questions at once put themselves to me. Firstly, were these men aware that my brother was from home for the night, and that only three helpless women and a girl were left in the house? Secondly, had they by some means become cognisant of the fact that a few hours previously Mr Shillito had paid my brother a considerable sum of money, which must necessarily still be somewhere on the premises? In my mind there was little doubt that both these facts were fully known to the men. My brother’s movements were as open as the day, and Dethel had doubtless ascertained from Reuben the groom that his master would be from home on this particular night; while as for Mr Shillito, everybody knew how he talked in his loud-voiced way about his most private affairs when he had taken more to drink than was good for him. At the bar of more than one tavern that evening, every one who might chance to be within hearing would not fail to be informed that Mr Shillito had just paid John Waldron his half-year’s rent.