"I won't, sir. He went away as usual, and it was our belief that he had given Mr. Boyd every satisfaction. I told you at the police station how we had hopes that Mr. Boyd would lend us a few pounds to get us out of our difficulty with the moneylender. I'm afraid every minute of the home being sold over our heads. We've only got a few bits of sticks, but we shouldn't know what to do without them. Mr. Boyd's a hard master, sir, and regularly every Saturday, when he paid my husband his wages, he grumbled that he was being robbed. My poor husband worked for him like a slave, and over and over again was kept in the office till ten and eleven o'clock at night without getting a sixpence overtime. It wasn't a bed of roses, I tell you that, sir; nothing but finding fault from morning to night, and he was always on the watch to catch my husband in some neglect of duty. On Friday afternoon, when he went out of the house on some business or other, his orders to my husband were that he was not to stir out of the office; if people knocked at the street door let them knock; he wasn't to answer them, but to keep himself shut up in the office. Those were the orders given, and my husband was careful to obey them. Two or three hours after Mr. Boyd was gone there came a knock at the street door, and my husband took no notice. The knock was repeated two or three times, but still he took no notice. Presently he heard a step on the stairs, and he thought it was Mr. Boyd come back, and who had knocked at the door to try him. It wasn't Mr. Boyd, sir. The gentleman who came into the room was Mr. Reginald." Taken by surprise at this unexpected piece of information, Dick cried, "Mr. Reginald!" "Mr. Boyd's son, sir. He and his father had a quarrel a long while ago, and Mr. Boyd turned him out of the house." "But if the street door was not opened to Mr. Reginald, how did he get in?" "He had a latchkey, which he told my husband he had taken with him when his father turned him off." A light seemed to be breaking upon Dick; all this was new to him. "At what time did you say Mr. Reginald entered his father's house?" "It must have been about six o'clock. When he heard that his father was not at home he said he would wait; but my husband begged him not to, and asked him to go away. He seemed so bent upon seeing his father--he used the word 'must,' my husband told me--that it was hard to persuade him, but at last he consented, and said he would call again at ten o'clock, when Mr. Boyd would be sure to be alone."