"To be sure I am, sir. He was smoking a pipe and looking in at the shop windows. He saw me and said, Good-night, Ann: he was always very pleasant. I thought he looked ill." Back I went to the refreshment-room. Those girls knew his address well enough, but for some reason would not give it--perhaps by Bevere's orders. Two young men were there now, sipping their beer, or whatever it was, and exchanging compliments with Miss Panken. I spoke to her civilly. "Mr. Bevere does not live at New Crescent: he left it eighteen months ago. Did you not know that? I think you can give me his address if you will." _She did not answer me at all._ It may be bar-room politeness. Regarding me for a full minute superciliously from my head to my boots, she slowly turned her shoulders the other way, and resumed her talk with the customers. I spoke then to the other, who was wiping glasses. "It is in Mr. Bevere's own interest that I wish to find him; I wish it very particularly indeed. He lives in this neighbourhood; I have heard that: if you can tell me where, I shall be very much obliged to you." The girl's face looked confused, timid, full of indecision, as if she knew the address but did not know whether to answer or not. By this time I had attracted attention, and silence fell on the room. Strong-minded Miss Panken came to the relief of her companion. "Did you call for a glass of ale?" she asked me, in a tone of incipient mockery. "Nor for soda?--nor bitters?--not even cherry-brandy?" she ran on. "No? Then as you don't seem to want anything we supply here, perhaps you'll take yourself off, young man, and leave space for them that do. Fancy this room being open to promiscuous inquirers, and us young ladies being obliged to answer 'em!" added Miss Panken affably to her two friends. "I'd like to see it!" Having thus put me down and turned her back upon me, I had nothing to wait for, and walked out of the lady's presence. The younger one's eyes followed me with a wistful look. I'm sure she would have given the address had she dared. After that day, I took to haunt the precincts of the Bell-and-Clapper, believing it to be my only chance of finding Bevere. Scott had a brief note from him, no address to it, stating that he was not yet well enough to resume his duties; and this note Scott forwarded to me. A letter also came to me; from Lady Bevere asking what the matter was that I did not write, and whether Roger was worse. How _could_ I write, unless I found him? So, all the leisure time that I could improvise I spent round about the Bell-and-Clapper. Not inside the room, amid its manifold attractions: Circe was a wily woman, remember, and pretty bottles are insidious. That particular Circe, also, Miss Panken, might have objected to my company and ordered me out of it. Up one road, down another, before this row of houses and that, I hovered for ever like a walking ghost. But I saw nothing of Bevere.