“And your choice was a very wise one. But listen: if you are faithful to me in the service you have undertaken to perform, you shall live in a first-floor front of any such a house as this, until I shall be better able to provide for you—which I certainly shall be, if you should be successful and faithful.” “Bless your honor! I will be faithful as faithful. But you haven’t told me yet what the service is agoing to be.” “I came here to-night to tell you, and I will tell you now—but, is the coast clear?” anxiously inquired Everage, looking around and seeing that the girl, Meg, at least had disappeared, and that himself and the crone were alone or seemed to be so. “Yes,” answered Mrs. Rooter, “the coast is clear. My brothers have not left the house though, because I hinted to ’em as they might light upon a job.” “Where are they, then?” “Up on the leads. I sent them there to wait your honor’s pleasure. And there they shall stay till your honor bids me call them down. If so be you would rather trust the business to me alone, I will, if I can, do it alone and they shall never know anything of it; but if your honor chooses to trust ’em, which I make bold to say—they are just trusty as trusty—why I’ll go call them.” “Go and call them—I will take a look at them, at all events,” said Everage. The beldam went out into the passage, and climbed a ladder leading to the open trap-door of the roof, and summoned her brothers; and presently their heavy steps came lumbering down the ladder; and she brought them into the presence of Everage. They were two ill-looking fellows enough, somewhere between forty and fifty years of age. The elder was tall, sallow, black-haired and black-eyed. The younger was short and thick-set, with broad shoulders, bull neck and bullet head covered with a thick shock of red hair. Both men were in rags. They came and stood before Everage and pulled their forelocks by way of salutation. “Well, my men, are you to be trusted in a service the faithful performance of which will accrue to your own profit?” inquired Everage, as he scanned his “tools.” Now the only ideas the ruffians gained from this speech was that there were secret services required, for which money was to be paid. So one of them, the dark one, replied: “What we undertakes to do, your honor, that we does faithful. But it depends on what the service is, and how it pays, whether we undertakes it.” “But if we undertakes it, we performs it faithful,” added the other, the red one. “Then, Mother Rooter, secure the door; and now all gather around me. You two men, and you, mother, sit upon the bedside, and bend close to me as I sit upon the chair before you.” The three arranged themselves as their employer directed. Then he, stooping towards them, and they towards him, so that all their mischief-brewing heads were together, began in a low whisper to unfold his plans. He came immediately to the point.