"All right."
About an hour after darkness had settled, while Madge Scarlet sat in the lower room, the one in which we have so many times met her, the door was unceremoniously opened, and a man crossed the threshold.
An old man he was, with bent form and white hair, a hump disfiguring his shoulder, his trembling right hand resting on the top of a cane.
"Good evening, mistress."
The old man, who had closed the door sharply to behind him, sank to a rickety chair as he uttered the greeting.
"I don't know you," retorted Madge Scarlet sharply. "Haven't you got into the wrong house?"
"Well, I dunno," whined the man in a sharp falsetto voice. "I reckon if you're Mistress Scarlet, you're the one I'm to see."
"I'm not ashamed to own to the name, old man. Let's have your business at once."
"I'm pretty much broke up since I came out of the bastile," said the old man. "'Taint jest the place for a gentleman, I can tell you that. It's mighty down-settin' on one's pride, which I had a heap of afore I was sent to abide there."
"Who are you and what are you driving at?"