"Well, Miss, I 'ad the key in my pocket, ready to change; and I knew well how 'twould be, if I was found out--I'd get the sack, or be locked up 'ere myself, more likely, and no more chances for you. Mr. Vargers was in the room--the porter's room they calls it now--and in I goes. I did not see no one there, but Vargers and he was lookin' sly, I thought, and him and Mr. Boult has been talking me over, I fancy, and they don't quite trust me. So I began to talk, wheedling him the best I could to let me go into town for an hour; 'twas only for talk, for well I knew I shouldn't get to go; but nothing but chaff did he answer. And then, says I, is Mr. Levice come yet, and he said, he is, but he has a second key of the back door and he may 'av' let himself hout. Well, I says, thinking to make Vargers jealous, he's a werry pleasant gentleman, a bit too pleasant for me, and I'm a-going to the kitchen, and I'd rayther he wastnt there, smoking as he often does, and talking nonsense, when I'm in it. There's others that's nicer, to my fancy, than him--so, jest you go and see, and I'll take care of heverything 'ere till you come back--and don't you be a minute. There was the keys, lying along the chimney-piece, at my left, and the big table in front, and nothing to hinder me from changing mine for his, but Vargers' eye over me. Little I thought he'd 'av' bin so ready to do as I said. But he smiled to himself-like, and he said he'd go and see. So away he went; and I listens at the door till I heard his foot go on the tiles of the passage that goes down by the 'ousekeeper's room, and the billiard-room, to the kitchen; and then on tip-toe, as quick as light, I goes to the chimney-piece, and without a sound, I takes the very key I wanted in my fingers, and drops it into my pocket, but putting down the other in its place, I knocked down the big leaden hink-bottle, and didn't it make a bang on the floor--and a terrible hoarse voice roars out from the tother side of the table--'What the devil are you doing there, huzzy?' Saving your presence, Miss; and up gets Mr. Boult, only half awake, looking as mad as Bedlam, and I thought I would have fainted away! Who'd 'av' fancied he was in the room? He had his 'ead on the table, and the cloak over it, and I think, when they 'eard me a-coming downstairs, they agreed he should 'ide hisself so, to catch me, while Vargers would leave the room, to try if I would meddle with the keys, or the like--and while Mr. Boult was foxing, he fell asleep in right earnest. Warn't it a joke, Miss? So I brazent it hout, Miss, the best I could, and I threatened to complain to Mr. Levi, and said I'd stay no longer, to be talked to, that way, by sich as he. And Boult could not tell Vargers he was asleep, and so I saw him count over the keys, and up I ran, singing." By this time the girl was on her knees, concealing the key between the beds, with the others. "Thank God, Phœbe, you have got it! But, oh! all that is before us still!"