“And Mr. Greenslade, he was just as bad. They didn’t eat enough to keep a well-grown child between the two of them.” “What-aged people were they?” I asked. “Well, sir, I can hardly say; they weren’t young nor yet old. Mr. Greenslade, he may have been about fifty, and his lady a year or two younger; but I never took much count of that. But the gentleman looked much the oldest of the two, by reason of a stoop in his shoulders and a constant cough that seemed to tear his chest to pieces. I’ve known him shut himself up in the parlour the whole night long, coughing away fit to keep the whole house awake. And his breathing, sir--you could hear it half a mile off.” “He was _assmatical_, poor man! that’s where it was,” interposed Mr. Browser. “Well, I don’t know what his complaint was called, Browser; but he made noise enough over it to wake the dead. But don’t you go interrupting me no more after that fashion, or the gentleman and lady will never understand the half of my story, and I’m just coming to the cream of it.” “I assure you we are deeply interested in what you are telling us,” I said, politely. “It’s very good of you to compliment me, sir, but I expect it will make matters clearer to you by-and-by. You’re not the first tenants of Rushmere I’ve had to tell this tale to, I can tell you, and you won’t be the last, either. One night, when I couldn’t sleep for his nasty cough, and lay awake, wishing to goodness he’d go to bed like a Christian, I made sure I heard footsteps in the hall, a-creeping and a-creeping about like, as though some one was feeling their way round the house. ‘It can’t be the mistress,’ I thought, ‘and maybe it’s robbers, as have little idea the master’s shut up in the study.’ So I opened the door quickly, but I could see nothing.” “Exactly my own experience,” I exclaimed. “Ah, sir, maybe; but they weren’t the same footsteps, poor dear. I wish they had been, and she had the same power to tread now she had then. The hall was empty; but at the same time I heard the master groaning and cursing most awful in the parlour, and I went into my own room again, that I mightn’t listen to his wicked oaths and words. I always hated and distrusted that man from the beginning. The next day I mentioned I had heard footsteps, before ’em both, and the rage Mr. Greenslade put himself into was terrible. He said no robbers had better break into his house, or he’d shoot them dead as dogs. Afterwards his wife came to me and asked me what sort of footsteps they seemed; and when I told her, she cried upon my neck, and begged me if I ever heard a woman’s step to say nothing of it to her husband. “‘A woman’s step, ma’am,’ I replied; ‘why, what woman would dare break into a house?’ “But she only cried the more, and held her tongue. “But that evening I heard their voices loud in the parlour, and there was a regular dispute between them.