I had given no thought to time, and now, when the church bells struck one o'clock, I was startled at the lateness of the hour. With a guilty look at each other, Jessie and I hurried home; before I could knock at the street-door, it was opened for us by my mother. She put her finger to her lips. 'I heard your steps, my dear,' she said, with anxious tenderness; 'hush, don't make a noise. You might wake your uncle.' 'We had no idea of the time, mother,' I said; 'it isn't Jessie's fault. I kept her talking, and really thought it was no more than eleven o'clock. I am so sorry we have kept you up! See what a lovely night it is.' We stood at the door for a little while, my mother in the centre, with her arms round our waists. When she kissed me and wished me good-night, I saw that she had been crying; but her pale face brightened as I put my arms about her neck, and held her to me for a few moments. When I released her, I found that we were alone; Jessie must have stepped upstairs very quietly, for I did not hear her leave the room. CHAPTER XXIV. TURK, THE FIRST VILLAIN. Of all the male members of the West family, Turk was the one I liked best. Our intimacy soon ripened into friendship, and he made me the confidant of his woes, and as I was a good listener, we got on admirably together. It seemed that he had never had 'a chance,' as he termed it, and that he had been condemned by fate to act a line of business which he declared was distasteful to him--although I must confess that my after experience of him convinced me that it was exactly suited to him, and he to it--and in theatres where the intellectual discernment of the audiences was proverbially of a low standard. 'Perhaps you will tell me,' he said to me, in one of our private conferences, 'what there is in my appearance that I should have been selected to play the first villain almost from my birth--from my birth, sir, Chris, my boy. Do I look like a murderer? Do I look like a man who had passed through a career of the deepest-dyed ruffianism, and was eager to go on with it? Speak your mind--it won't hurt me; I'm used to criticism, and I know what value to place upon it.' Turk was really a slight-made man, and as I had not seen him act at the time of these utterances, I could not understand his sister's praises of him as the best murderer to slow music that she had ever seen. His appearance in private life was, to say the best of it, insignificant, and as utterly opposed to that of a deeply-dyed ruffian as can well be imagined. The only likeness to the description Josey West had given of him that I could see was his 'glare,' and he certainly did roll his eyes as he spoke, with an effect which was nothing less than tremendous. I mentioned to him that I had heard the greatest praises of his acting, and that he played the villain's part to the life.