Matilda Street is essentially a shy neighbourhood--perhaps that is why the tenant of number 13 has chosen it as his residence. On the door-plate of number 13 is the simple inscription, "Parsons, agent." It's rather a puzzle to make out what Mr. Parsons is agent for; no clients ever come to see him, and he seems to pass the greater part of his day in smoking a pipe and reading a newspaper. But Mr. Parsons has his profession--he was born in it, so to speak, and his father was a professor before him; but his father failed, and his father's unfortunate failure has been a lesson to him. The real fact is that Mr. Parson's father was a burglar of the fine old school. His was a life of vicissitude; and though an ambitious and fairly successful man, the law, against which he had waged war for many years, got the better of him at last; and after having passed nearly forty years of his life in Her Majesty's jails, death at length prevented his obtaining the ticket-of-leave he had almost earned, and his consequent return to business. It is all very well for the majority of us to wonder why Mr. Parsons didn't attempt to earn an honest livelihood, but we must remember that he had been brought up to a profession of which most people disapprove from his earliest infancy. As quite a little fellow he had accompanied his father on many a successful nocturnal expedition; it had been his duty to keep watch for the guardians of public order, and to signal their approach. He had been taught to rapidly dispose of precious plunder in a neat little crucible, plunged in a fierce fire of coke; as he got bigger, he it was who sat ready at the corner of the street in a tax-cart, prepared to rapidly drive off with the "swag" when of a bulky nature.