"Master Dicky, there's an old aged man at the door inquiring if you live here." So Dicky thought it was the bootmaker perhaps; so he went out, and Oswald went with him, because he wanted to ask for a bit of cobbler's wax. But it was not the shoemaker. It was an old man, pale in the face and white in the hair, and he was so old that we asked him into Father's study by the fire, as soon as we had found out it was really Dicky he wanted to see. When we got him there he said-- "Might I trouble you to shut the door?" This is the way a burglar or a murderer might behave, but we did not think he was one. He looked too old for these professions. When the door was shut, he said-- "I ain't got much to say, young gemmen. It's only to ask was it you sent this?" He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket, and it was our list. Oswald and Dicky looked at each other. "Did you send it?" said the old man again. So then Dicky shrugged his shoulders and said, "Yes." Oswald said, "How did you know and who are you?" The old man got whiter than ever. He pulled out a piece of paper--it was the greenish-grey piece we'd wrapped the Turk and chains in. And it had a label on it that we hadn't noticed, with Dicky's name and address on it. The new bat he got at Christmas had come in it. [Illustration: WHEN THE DOOR WAS SHUT HE SAID, "I AIN'T GOT MUCH TO SAY, YOUNG GEMMEN."] "That's how I know," said the old man. "Ah, be sure your sin will find you out." "But who are you, anyway!" asked Oswald again. "Oh, _I_ ain't nobody in particular," he said. "I'm only the father of the pore gell as you took in with your cruel, deceitful, lying tricks. Oh, you may look uppish, young sir, but I'm here to speak my mind, and I'll speak it if I die for it. So now!" "But we didn't send it to a girl," said Dicky. "We wouldn't do such a thing. We sent it for a--for a----" I think he tried to say for a joke, but he couldn't with the fiery way the old man looked at him--"for a sell, to pay a porter out for stopping me getting into a train when it was just starting, and I missed going to the Circus with the others." Oswald was glad Dicky was not too proud to explain to the old man. He was rather afraid he might be. "I never sent it to a girl," he said again.