don't have him taken up on suspicion of that murder, is odd to me."

"You'd better hold your tongue about that suspicion," interposed
Mirrable. "I have cautioned you before, _I_ shouldn't like to breathe
a word against a desperate man; I should go about in fear that he might
hear of it, and revenge himself."

In came the clerk. "I don't see a sign of any one about," he said; "and
I'm sure whoever it was could not have had time to get away. You must
have been mistaken, Mrs. Jones."

"Mistaken in what, pray?"

"That any man was there. You got confused, and fancied it, perhaps. As to
Pike, he'd never dare come on my premises, whether by night or day. What
were you doing at the window?"

"Listening," defiantly replied Mrs. Jones. "And now I'll just tell out
what I've had in my head this long while, Mr. Gum, and know the reason of
Nancy's slighting me in the way she does. What secret has she and Mary
Mirrable got between them?"

"Secret?" repeated the clerk, whilst his wife gave a faint cry, and
Mirrable turned her calm face on Mrs. Jones. "Have they a secret?"

"Yes, they have," raved Mrs. Jones, giving vent to her long pent-up
emotion. "If they haven't, I'm blind and deaf. If I have come into your
house once during the past year and found Mrs. Mirrable in it, and the
two sitting and whispering, I've come ten times. This evening I came in
at dusk; I turned the handle of the door and peeped into the best