"I'm going to pass the night with a relation of mine that's ill, and which lives at the top of the Lane," answered Mrs. Bunce. "But, Oh! Mr. Rainford, what a shocking thing this is about poor dear Mr. Bones!" "What?" ejaculated Tom, with a kind of guilty start. "Why, sir—he's dead, poor man!" sobbed Mrs. Bunce: "dead and buried, sir!" "Dead—and buried!" repeated the highwayman mechanically. "And how came you to know this?" "His friend Mr. Tidmarsh came and told me and Toby about it this blessed morning; and in the afternoon we all followed the poor old gentleman to the grave in Clerkenwell churchyard." "His death was sudden, then?" said Tom, anxious to glean how far the woman might be informed relative to the particulars of the event which she was deploring. "Mr. Tidmarsh isn't given to gossiping, sir," replied Mrs. Bunce; "and he said very little about it. It was quite enough for us to know that the poor dear old gentleman is gone—and without having made any Will either: so me and Toby are thrown as you may say on the wide world, without a friend to help us." "But Mr. Bones was rich—very rich—was he not?" demanded Tom, who felt particularly uncomfortable at this confirmation of his worst fears—for he to some extent looked upon himself as the cause of the old fence's sudden death. "Rich, God bless ye! Ah! as rich as a King!" exclaimed Mrs. Bunce. "But no one knows where he kept his money—unless it is that Tidmarsh." "And where did he die?" asked Rainford. "At Tidmarsh's own place in Turnmill Street, Clerkenwell," was the answer. "Poor old man! But you must have seen him only a short time before he went off, Mr. Rainford," she added, as if recollecting the fact: "for it was on that very night when he took Toby and Jacob over with him to a house in Lock's Fields, and which turned out to be where you lived. You know he stayed with you while Jacob and Toby went away. Poor old man! he's a great loss—a very great loss!" "Were you so dependent on him, then?" asked Rainford. "Yes, almost entirely, as I may say," was the reply. "And then there's poor Jacob, too: what in the world he'll do, I'm sure I can't say—for me and Toby can't afford to keep him now that our best friend's gone. But good night, Mr. Rainford: I must go on to my cousin's—for it's very late, and _she_, may be, will pop off the hooks before I get to her." "Good night," returned Tom, slackening his pace so as to allow the woman to proceed as far a-head of him as possible ere he entered his own dwelling, which was now close at hand. In a few moments the form of Mrs. Bunce was lost in the darkness of the night. Rainford was now convinced that Old Death was indeed no more—that no prompt assistance had resuscitated him, even if the vital spark were not extinct at the moment when he saw him for the last time, bound to the chair, at the house in Red Lion Street. Yes—it was clear enough—too clear: Benjamin Bones was dead—and Tidmarsh had pounced upon all his property.