What on earth had he come for? was the question which arose, and could not be answered. There was nothing much to steal just there, for none of the tree-fruit was ripe; and though darkness forbade entire certainty, I felt pretty sure that the owner of that face would call himself a gentleman. It seemed to me better upon the whole to say nothing about the matter, for my uncle would probably laugh at it, as the product of my imagination; and as for the police, I knew too well that they would make nothing out of it. Only it was evident to my mind that this little adventure had some bearing on my trouble; and in spite of the dusk, I could swear to that face, wherever I should come across it. My uncle would have stopped me from going to London, on account of the injuries which I could not hide, for my hands as well as my knees were cut. But I went by the ’bus, being very lame as yet, and unable to walk without aid of a stick. Mrs. Wilcox received me very kindly, and I was glad to find her business thriving, and the sharp boy released from the pots, and growing very useful at the counter. “It has done him a deal of good, indeed it has, Mr. Kit,” she said, when I ventured to hint that his employment had not been elevating; “he knows every soul it is safe to give tick to; and as for bad shillings, of which I had a dozen, not one have we took since he come back. Ah, what a tradesman he will make! But now, sir, about your poor dear self. No one to stitch your knees better than that—ah, the righteous is always punished in this earth.” I told her exactly how things stood—that everything was as dark as ever, that the neighbourhood had been searched in vain (as might have been expected), that one or two false clues had been followed, not by myself, but by the police, and that now I meant to take the matter entirely into my own hands, as I should have done at first except for a private reason, which I told her, to wit the disappearance of the money. She was angry that this should have been allowed to hinder me even for a day. But when I told her how it weighed upon my spirits, and seemed to show that my wife was not at all in her duty to me, Mrs. Wilcox sided with me, and said that every one must do the same, whether I were right in the end or wrong. And then I asked her what she thought; and she said that she was afraid to say. “Not that I don’t know her, sir,” she proceeded when she saw my disappointment; “as well as the inside of my own shoe, having had her almost from the bottle, and cut the best of her teeth on my own thumb. But they changes so, when they falls in love, as I know from my own experience, though going on then for thirty-five, that to make a prediction comes back on the mouth. I began it already; but it turned out wrong; and I said to myself—‘If you want to be considered above the average, as you always was, you better wait, and see how the cat jumps first.’ For that is the way of the women, sir, in general.”