mind, by confirming his own opinion and banishing his doubts, that he composes himself to smoke another pipe on that exceptional occasion, and to have a talk over old times with the whole Bagnet family, according to their various ranges of experience.

Through these means it comes to pass, that Mr George does not again rise to his full height in that parlour until the time is drawing on when the bassoon and fife are expected by a British public at the theatre; and as it takes time even then for Mr George, in his domestic character of Bluffy, to take leave of Quebec and Malta, and insinuate a sponsorial shilling into the pocket of his godson, with felicitations on his success in life, it is dark when Mr George again turns his face towards Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

“A family home,” he ruminates, as he marches along, “however small it is, makes a man like me look lonely. But it’s well I never made that evolution of matrimony. I shouldn’t have been fit for it. I am such a vagabond still, even at my present time of life, that I couldn’t hold to the gallery a month together, if it was a regular pursuit, or if I didn’t camp there, gipsy fashion. Come! I disgrace nobody and cumber nobody: that’s something. I have not done that, for many a long year!”

So he whistles it off, and marches on.

Arrived in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and mounting Mr Tulkinghorn’s stair, he finds the outer door closed, and the chambers shut; but the trooper not knowing much about outer doors, and the staircase being dark besides, he is yet fumbling and groping about, hoping to discover a bell handle or to open the door for himself, when Mr Tulkinghorn comes up the stairs (quietly, of course), and angrily asks:

“Who is that? What are you doing there?”

“I ask your pardon, sir. It’s George. The serjeant.”

“And couldn’t George, the serjeant, see that my door was locked?”

“Why, no, sir, I couldn’t. At any rate, I didn’t,” says the trooper, rather nettled.

“Have you changed your mind? or are you in the same mind?” Mr Tulkinghorn demands. But he knows well enough at a glance.

“In the same mind, sir.”

“I thought so. That’s sufficient. You can go. So, you are the man,” says Mr Tulkinghorn, opening his door with the key, “in whose hiding-place Mr Gridley was found?”

“Yes, I am the man,” says the trooper, stopping two or three stairs down. “What then, sir?”

“What then? I don’t like your associates. You should not have seen the inside of my door this morning, if I had thought of your being that man. Gridley? A threatening, murderous, dangerous fellow.”

With these words, spoken in an unusually high tone for him, the lawyer goes into his rooms, and shuts the door with a thundering noise.

Mr George takes his dismissal in great dudgeon; the greater, because a clerk coming up the stairs has heard the last words of all, and evidently applies them to him. “A pretty character to bear,” the trooper growls with a hasty oath, as he strides down-stairs. “A threatening, murderous, dangerous fellow!” and looking up, he sees the clerk looking down at him, and marking him as he passes a lamp. This so intensifies his dudgeon, that for five minutes he is in an ill humour. But he whistles that off, like the rest of it; and marches home to the Shooting Gallery.