He paced the hall and the room adjoining till the bell at the outer gate announced Jacob Wincher’s return. Mrs. Wincher went to admit her lord and master, who presently appeared with a small truck or hand-barrow, in which, aided by his wife, he deposited the pyramid of goods and chattels, which process involved a good deal more careful fitting-in of curiously-shaped objects into odd corners. Everything, however, having been finally adjusted to the satisfaction of both parties, Mr. Wincher reëntered the house for the last time, while Mrs. Wincher waited on the steps, and delivered the keys to Lucius. Every key was neatly labelled with a slip of parchment, whereon was inscribed its number in Homer Sivewright’s crabbed penmanship. ‘Those are all the keys, sir, just as my master gave them to me when we first came here,’ said Jacob Wincher. ‘I’ve got a bit of a lodging. Perhaps you’d be kind enough to take down the address, as I should be glad to learn if ever you find out the real party that took the silver out of the chest, and likewise tampered with the medicine.’ ‘If ever I find any evidence of your innocence you shall hear of it, Mr. Wincher,’ answered Lucius gravely. ‘What is the address?’ ‘Mrs. Hickett’s, Crown-and-Anchor-alley, Bridge-street, sir; not a quarter of an hour’s walk from here.’ Lucius wrote the address in his pocket-book without another word. This last duty performed the Winchers departed, and Lucius felt that he had taken the one step most likely to insure the safety of his patient. ‘If not they, who else?’ he said to himself, thinking of the arsenic in the medicine bottle. He went once more to Lucille’s room, but hardly crossed the threshold. The sick girl was sleeping, and the nurse gave a very fair account of her. He told Mrs. Milderson her duties—how she was to attend to Mr. Sivewright as well as to his granddaughter, and told her furthermore how he had just dismissed the old servants. ‘I am going in search of some one to take their place,’ he said, having made up his mind upon that point some time ago. He went round the lower part of the house, tried all the keys, saw that all the doors were secured—those opening on the garden bolted and barred as firmly as if they had belonged to a besieged citadel. He looked through all the labels, but found no key to the staircase door up-stairs; a circumstance that annoyed him, as he had a particular desire to examine those rooms on the top story. Then, having made all safe, he went out, locking the hall-door and the iron gate after him, and proceeded straightway to Mr. Otranto’s office. Here he told that functionary exactly what he had done. Mr. Otranto chewed the end of his pen, and smiled upon his client with the calm smile of intellectual superiority.