_Briefly details a slight love-skirmish between Sammy and Miss Sowersoft, which took place before Colin, while that youth was supposed to be asleep, and also illustrates the manner in which old maids sometimes endeavour to procure themselves husbands.--Colin's employment at the lodge.--He becomes involved in a dilemma, which threatens unheard-of consequences._ After Colin had spent some twenty minutes where we left him at the conclusion of the last chapter, he crept into bed. The room in which he lay being partly in the roof, admitted only of a very small window in the upright portion of the wall, and that was placed so close to the floor as to throw very little light into the apartment, except during a strong day or moon light. The candle being extinguished, Colin could see nothing save a small square of dim light where the window was. Below stairs he could hear the muttering of voices, as Miss Sower-soft still endeavoured to restore the beauty of Mr. Palethorpe's countenance; and in the false floor over his head the sound of rats, who were at work in the roof, making noise sufficient over their labours to keep awake, during the whole night, any person less accustomed to that kind of nocturnal entertainment than the inhabitants of country-houses usually are. Colin could usually have slept soundly had all the rats in Christendom been let loose in a legion about him, but he could not sleep tonight. It was pitch-dark; he was in a strange place, with brutal employers, who disliked him only because he had offered to relieve a poor old man of some portion of his labours. Who knew--for such things had been heard of, and passionate men often take their revenge, regardless of consequences--who knew, as Mr. Palethorpe was to occupy the adjoining bed, that he might not take advantage of his sleep, and steal out in the night to murder him? He might do so, and then throw him down the brook, as he had threatened, or perhaps bury him deep in the garden, and say in the morning that he had run away.