After examining half-a-dozen cupboards in the lower regions, Mr. Carter and his guide ascended to the upper story. The girl called Betsy ushered the detective into a bedroom, which she said was her master's, and where the occupation of the Major was made manifest by divers articles of apparel lying on the chairs and hanging on the pegs, and, furthermore, by a powerful effluvium of stale tobacco, and a collection of pipes and cigar-boxes on the chimney-piece. The girl opened the door of an impossible-looking little cupboard in a corner behind a four-post bed; but instead of inspecting the cupboard, Mr. Carter made a sudden rush at the door, locked it, and then put the key in his pocket. "No, thank you, Miss Innocence," he said; "I don't crick my neck, or break my back, by looking into any more of your cupboards. Just you come here." "Here," was the window, before which Mr. Carter planted himself. The girl obeyed very quietly. She would have been a pretty-looking girl but for her toothache, or rather, but for the coloured handkerchief which muffled the lower part of her face, and was tied in a knot at the top of her head. As it was, Mr. Carter could only see that she had pretty brown eyes, which shifted left and right as he looked at her. "Oh, yes, you're an artful young hussy, and no mistake," he said; "and that toothache's only a judgment upon you. What was that your master said to you in the parlour just now, eh? What was that he told you to hold your tongue about, eh?" Betty shook her head, and began to twist the corner of her apron in her hands. "Master didn't say nothing, sir," she said. "Master didn't say nothing! Your morals and your grammar are about a match, Miss Betsy; but you'll find yourself rather in the wrong box by-and-by, my young lady, when you find yourself committed to prison for perjury; which crime, in a young female, is transportation for life," added Mr. Carter, in an awful tone. "Oh, sir!" cried Betty, "it isn't me; it's master: and he do swear so when he's in his tantrums. If the 'taters isn't done to his likin', sir, he'll grumble about them quite civil at first, and then he'll work hisself up like, and take and throw them at me one by one, and his language gets worse with every 'tater. Oh, what am I to do, sir! I daren't go against him. I'd a'most sooner be transported, if it don't hurt much." "Don't hurt much!" exclaimed Mr. Carter; "why, there's a ship-load of cat-o'-nine-tails goes out to Van Diemen's Land every quarter, and reserved specially for young females!" "Oh! I'll tell you all about it, sir," cried Mr. Vernon's housemaid; "sooner than be took up for perjuring, I'll tell you everything." "I thought so," said Mr. Carter; "but it isn't much you've got to tell me. Mr. Dunbar came here this morning on horseback, between five and six?" "It was ten minutes past six, sir, and I was opening the shutters." "Precisely."