Seizing a lamp Sally Salisbury ran down the stairs and opened the door. Holding the lamp high over her head the light fell with striking effect upon her luxuriant yellow hair clustering down upon a neck and shoulders that Juno might have envied. The resemblance did not stop here. Juno in anger could have found her double in Sally Salisbury at that moment. Evidently the visitor was unwelcome. "What does this silly masquerade mean?" she demanded, her eyes roaming over the coachman's livery in high displeasure. "Have you turned over a new leaf and gone into honest service?" "Honest service be damned! Honesty doesn't belong to me or to you either, Sally. Where's the man I'm looking for? I twigged the fellow just as you shut the door upon him." "Did you? Then you're welcome to go on looking." He strode in, muttering oaths. When the door was closed he turned upon her. "Hang me, Sally, if I know what your game is in sheltering this spark. Anyhow you wouldn't do it if you didn't see your way to some coin out of him." "I don't, so shut up your sauce." "More fool you then. Look here, Sal. I've got hold of a cull or I shouldn't be in this lackey's coat. The fool's bursting with gold and he wants someone to help him to spend it. I'll be hanged if there's another woman in London like you for that fun. Now's your chance. He's sweet on a wench--a raw boarding school miss--he ran off with her an hour or so ago. The little fool thought she was going to be married by a Fleet parson, but somehow she took fright and jumped out of the coach on London Bridge. How the devil she did it beats me, though to be sure when one of your sex makes up her mind to anything she'll do it and damme, I believe Beelzebub helps her. Now then----" "What's this gabble to do with me?" broke in Sally, disdainfully. "Wait a minute. The wench had a friend in the crowd--a man who got her away--damn him. I jumped from the coach and we had a set to. See this?" Scowling ferociously Rofflash pointed to a lump beneath his eye which promised to become a beautiful mouse on the morrow. "The jackanapes got me on the hop; my foot slipped and s'life, I was down. But for that I'd ha' spitted him like a partridge. By the time I was on my legs the mob were after him. I joined in the hue and cry and we ran him down to your house. Now then, where's his hiding hole? It'll mean a matter o' twenty guineas in your pocket to give him up." "Blood money! I don't earn my living that way. You could have spared your breath, Rofflash. The man's not here. I'll show you how he escaped. Come this way." Sally led the fellow to the window overlooking the Black Ditch and told him the story. "Are you bamboozling me, you jade?" growled Rofflash. "It would be like you." "I daresay it would if it were worth my while but it isn't. Look for yourself. Can't you see the deep foot-prints in the mud?"