Here was obviously resented a chance of obtaining the command of a secret of greater or less importance. It was a considerable stake to play for, and well worth a trifling risk.

He did not hesitate to follow—but with the soft tread of a polite butler, doing his offices over the thick carpet of a drawing-room—and it was in his mind—'Suppose he does discover me, what then? I'm as much surprised as he! Thomas Brewen, the footman, who is under notice to leave, has twice, to the captain's knowledge, played me the same trick, and stole out through the gunroom window at night, and denied it afterwards; so I sat up to detect him, and hearing the door open, and a step, I pursued, and find I've made a mistake; and beg pardon with proper humility—supposing the master is on the same errand—what can he say? It will bring me a present, and a hint to say nothing of my having seen him in the yew-walk at this hour.'

Of course he did not run through all this rigmarole in detail; but the situation, the excuse, and the result, were present to his mind, and filled him with a comfortable assurance.

Therefore, with decision and caution, he followed Captain Lake's march, and reaching the yew-walk, he saw the slim figure in the cap and paletot turn the corner, and enter the broad walk between the two wall-like beech hedges, which led direct to the first artificial pond—a long, narrow parallelogram, round which the broad walk passed in two straight lines, fenced with the towering beech hedges, shorn as smooth as the walls of a nunnery.

When the butler reached the point at which Captain Lake had turned, he found himself all at once within fifty steps of that eccentric gentleman, who was talking, but in so low a tone, that not even the sound of the voices reached him, with a rather short, broad-shouldered person, buttoned up in a surtout, and wearing a queer, Germanesque, felt hat, battered and crushed a good deal.

Mr. Larcom held his breath. He was profoundly interested. After a while, with an oath, he exclaimed—

'That's him!'

Then, after another pause, he gasped another oath:—

'It is him!'

The square-built man in the surtout had a great pair of black whiskers; and as he stood opposite Lake, conversing, with, now and again, an earnest gesture, he showed a profile which Mr. Larcom knew very well; and now they turned and walked slowly side by side along the broad walk by that perpendicular wall of crisp brown leaves, he recognised also a certain hitch in his shoulder, which made him swear and asseverate again.