“Yes, in your way, but not exactly in mine. However, I am wearied, and, if you please, while you are beginning where you ended, I shall go to bed.”
“I have done enough to-day,” was the reply; “I shall see what more can be done to-morrow. I have some letters to write.”
Leaving him, I went out, but in place of going down the High Street home, I proceeded to Smith’s Close, where I knew Mrs Walker had her tavern, and had had it for years.
“Mrs Walker,” said I, as the good woman opened the door, “did two young men lodge with you for a few days lately?”
“Ay,” replied she.
“Will you shew me where they slept?”
And leading the way, she shewed me into a bedroom with one bed in it.
I then began to look about in my ordinary way, first very cursorily, and finding nothing, where I expected nothing, I got upon my knees, and sprawled in under the bed, so low being the bottom that it was with great difficulty I could get a part of my body in. I then came out again, as most people do when they get into any kind of holes, except one, pulling out after me a pillow-case, apparently, that is, to the touch, filled with hay, and so, to be sure, in undoing the mouth, I found it was. On pulling out the hay, however, I brought along with it a towel containing something hard.
“There will be eggs among the hay,” said the landlady.