"I shouldn't be surprised if you've laid your finger on the very man--and if we lay our fingers on him before the day is over. You will excuse my saying, miss, that you've got the faculty of observation--marked. I couldn't have given a better description of a chap myself--and I've been a bit longer at the game than you have. Now I'll just go through the place once more, and then I'll go; and then in due course you'll hear from us again."
He did go through the place once more--and he did go.
"Now," observed Madge to herself, as she watched him going down the road, "all that remains, is for us in due course to hear from you again--to some effect--and that, if you're the sort of blunderbuss I take you to be, will be never."
Turning from the window, she looked about the room, speaking half in jest and half in earnest.
"This is a delightful state of things--truly! It seems as if we couldn't have found a more undesirable habitation, if we had tried Petticoat Lane. Not the first burglar that's been in the place! And the house well known to the police--not to speak of a sinister reputation in all the country side! Charming! Clover Cottage seems to be an ideal place of residence for two lone, lorn young women. The abode of mystery, and, so far as I can make out, a sink of crime, one wonders if it still waits to become the scene of some ghastly murder to give to the situation its crowning touches. I shiver--or, at any rate, I ought to shiver--when I reflect on the horrors with which I may be, and probably am, surrounded!"
Ella returned earlier than the day before, and, this time, she came alone. The question burst from her lips the instant she was in the house.
"Well, has anything happened?"
"Nothing--of importance. It's true the police have been, but as it appears that they've been here over and over again before, that's a trifle. There's been at least one previous burglar upon the premises, and it seems that the house has been known to the police--and to the whole neighbourhood--for years, in the most disreputable possible sense."
Ella could but gasp.
"Madge!"