‘How long did the man stay?’ asked Lucius briefly. ‘Well, sir, that’s the puzzling part of it all, and what’s been worritin’ me ever since. I never see him go away. But I make no doubt he went out the back way—down by them barges, as is easy enough, you know, and him as active a gentleman as I ever see.’ ‘You did not see him leave? Why, then, he is in the house at this moment,’ cried Lucius. ‘Why should he leave? His object was to remain here in hiding.’ ‘I’ve been over every nookt and corner in the house, sir, since he gave me the slip, as you may say, for want of better words to express it, though too much a gentleman, I’m sure, to do anything underhanded, and so has my husband, up-stairs and down-stairs till our legs ached again. The gentleman asks me to show him the back premises first—his object bein’ space for his works, as he says—and so I took him through the kitchen and round by the washhouse and brewhouse, and I opens the door into the back garden and shows him that, and I opens the outside shutters of the half-glass door leadin’ into the back parlour, meanin’ to take him through the house that way, when I looks round, after openin’ the shutters for him to foller me, and he was gone. There wasn’t a vestige of him—whether he’d gone back to the hall and let hisself out quietly, havin’ seen all as he wanted to see, and p’raps found as the place didn’t meet his views, or whether he’d gone down the garden and got over the wall to the barges, is more than I can tell; but gone he was and gone he is, for me and my husband has exploded every hinch of the ’ouse from garret to cellar.’ ‘Did you look at that little back staircase I told you of?’ ‘Lor, no, sir; as if any one callin’ hisself a gentleman and dressed beautiful would go in that hole of a place, among cobwebs and rotten plaster, and dangerous too I should think on such a night as this, with the wind roaring like thunder.’ ‘Give me a candle,’ said Lucius; ‘no, I’ll go up-stairs without one.’ He pulled off his boots and ran rapidly and lightly up the old staircase and along the corridor. He opened the door of the little dressing-room where Lucille had slept, with a noiseless hand, and crept in. The door of communication between this room and Mr. Sivewright’s bedchamber stood ajar, and Lucius heard a familiar voice speaking in the next room—speaking quietly enough, in tones so calm that he stopped by the door to listen. It was a voice which he could not hear without a shudder—a voice which he had last heard in the hut in the American pine-forest, that silent wood where never came the note of song-bird. ‘Father!’ said the voice, with a quiet bitterness keener than the loudest passion. ‘Father! in what have you ever been a father to me? Who taught me to rob you when I was a child? My mother, you say! I say it was you who taught me that lesson—you who denied us a fair share of your wealth—who hid your gains from us—who hoarded and scraped, and refused us every pleasure!’