"Thank you for your trouble," said Mr. Elster. "I shall not forget it." "You'll remember it, perhaps, if a question arises touching that shed," spoke the man. "I may need a word sometime with Lord Hartledon." "I'll remember it, Pike. Here, wait a moment. Is Thomas Pike your real name?" "Well, I conclude it is. Pike was the name of my father and mother. As to Thomas--not knowing where I was christened, I can't go and look at the register; but they never called me anything but Tom. Did you wish to know particularly?" There was a tone of mockery in the man's answer, not altogether acceptable to his hearer; and he let him go without further hindrance. But the man turned back in an instant of his own accord. "I dare say you are wanting to know why I did you this little turn, Mr. Elster. I have been caught in corners myself before now; and if I can help anybody to get out of them without trouble to myself, I'm willing to do it. And to circumvent these law-sharks comes home to my spirit as wholesome refreshment." Mr. Pike finally departed. He took the lonely way, and only struck into the high-road opposite his own domicile, the shed. Passing round it, he hovered at its rude door--the one he had himself made, along with the ruder window--and then, treading softly, he stepped to the low stile in the hedge, which had for years made the boundary between the waste land on which the shed stood and Clerk Gum's garden. Here he halted a minute, looking all ways. Then he stepped over the stile, crouched down amongst Mr. Gum's cabbages, got under shelter of the hedge, and so stole onwards, until he came to an anchor at the kitchen-window, and laid his ear to the shutter, just as it had recently been laid against the glass in the dining-room of my Lord Hartledon. That he had a propensity for prying into the private affairs of his neighbours near and distant, there could be little doubt about. Mr. Pike, however, was not destined on this one occasion to reap any substantial reward. The kitchen appeared to be wrapped in perfect silence. Satisfying himself as to this, he next took off his heavy shoes, stole past the back door, and so round the clerk's house to the front. Very softly indeed went he, creeping by the wall, and emerging at last round the angle, by the window of the best parlour. Here, most excessively to Mr. Pike's consternation, he came upon a lady doing exactly what he had come to do--namely, stealthily listening at the window to anything there might be to hear inside. The shrill scream she gave when she found her face in contact with the wild intruder, might have been heard over at Dr. Ashton's. Clerk Gum, who had been quietly writing in his office, came out in haste, and recognized Mrs. Jones, the wife of the surly porter at the station, and step-mother to the troublesome young servant, Rebecca. Pike had totally disappeared.