Yet, strange to say, she seemed unconscious of that co-operation. Had Robert Penfold found his way home by some strange means? Was he watching over her in secret? He had the woman he loved watched night and day, but no Robert Penfold was detected. He puzzled his brain night and day, and at last he conceived a plan of deceit which is common enough in the East, where lying is one of the fine arts, but was new in this country, we believe, and we hope to Heaven we shall not be the means of importing it. An old clerk of his father's, now superannuated and pensioned off, had a son upon the stage, in a very mean position. Once a year, however, and of course in the dogdays, he had a kind of benefit at his suburban theater; that is to say, the manager allowed him to sell tickets, and take half the price of them. He persuaded Arthur to take some, and even to go to the theater for an hour. The man played a little part, of a pompous sneak, with some approach to Nature. He seemed at home. Arthur found this man out; visited him at his own place. He was very poor, and mingled pomposity with obsequiousness, so that Arthur felt convinced he was to be bought, body and soul, what there was of him. He sounded him accordingly, and the result was that the man agreed to perform a part for him. Arthur wrote it, and they rehearsed it together. As to the dialogue, that was so constructed that it could be varied considerably according to the cues, which could be foreseen to a certain extent; but not precisely, since they were to be given by Helen Rolleston, who was not in the secret. But while this plot was fermenting, other events happened, with rather a contrary tendency; and these will be more intelligible if we go back to Nancy Rouse's cottage, where indeed we have kept Joseph Wylie in an uncomfortable position a very long time. Mrs. James, from next door, was at last admitted into Nancy's kitchen, and her first word was, "I suppose you know what I'm come about, ma'am." "Which it is to return me the sasspan you borrowed, no doubt," was Nancy's ingenuous reply. "No, ma'am. But I'll send my girl in with it, as soon as she have cleaned it, you may depend." "Thank ye, I shall be glad to see it again." "You're not afeard I shall steal it, I hope?" '"La, bless the woman! don't fly out at a body like that. I can't afford to give away my sasspan." "Sasspans is not in my head." "Nor in your hand neither." "I'm come about my lodger; a most respectable gentleman, which he have met with an accident. He did but go to put something away in the chimbley, which he is a curious gent, and has traveled a good deal, and learned the foreign customs, when his hand was caught in the brick-work, somehows, and there he is hard and fast." "Do you know anything about this?" said Nancy to the mite, severely. "No," said the mite, with a countenance of polished granite.