“You thoroughly understand your instructions now?” questioned Mortlake, as he concluded speaking.

The fellow who had been addressed by his companion as Joey, at the time they encountered Mortlake and Harding on the road to the Galloway farm, nodded.

“We understand, guv’ner,” he rasped out in a hoarse voice; “Slim, here, and me don’t take long ter catch on, eh, Slim?”

“No dubious manner of doubt about that,” responded Slim.  “An’ although I’m a tramp now, guv’ner, I wasn’t allers one.  I’ve held my head as high as the rest of the good folks of the world.  I can play the gentleman to perfection.  Don’t you worry.”

This Slim—­or to give him his correct name—­Frederick Palmer, was, as he declared with such emphasis, a man who had indeed “seen better days,” as the phrase is.  Now that he was invested in fair-looking clothes, and was graced with a clean collar and a smooth-shaven face, he actually might have passed for a person in fairly well-to-do circumstances.  For the part Mortlake wished him to play, he could not have picked out a better man.  Utterly unscrupulous, and with the best of his life behind him, “Slim”—­as the tramp fraternity knew him—­was prepared to do anything that there was money in.  His companion possessed no such saving graces of appearance.  Short, coarse, and utterly lacking in every element of refinement, Joey Eccles was a typical hobo.  But Mortlake’s shrewd mind had seen where he could make use of him, too, in the diabolical plan he was concocting, and the details of which he had just finished confiding to his unsavory lieutenants.

“But say, guv’ner,” struck in Joey Eccles, his little pig-like eyes agleam with cupidity, “we’ve got to have a bit more of the brass, you know—­a little more money—­eh?”

He ended in an insinuating whine, the cringing plea of the professional beggar.

Mortlake made a gesture of impatience.

“I gave you fellows a twenty-dollar-bill a few days ago,” he said, “in addition to that, you’ve been provided with clothes and lodging.  What more do you want?”

“We’ve got to have some more coin, that’s flat,” announced Slim decidedly; “come on, fork over, guv’ner.  You’ve gone too far into this now to pull out.”

Mortlake’s florid face went white.  As if he heard it for the first time, the words struck home.  He had indeed “gone too far,” as the tramp sitting opposite to him had said.  He was, in fact, completely in the power of these two unscrupulous mendicants.  Making a resolve to get rid of them as speedily as possible, he dived into his breast pocket and drew from it a roll of bills that made Slim’s and Joey’s eyes stick out of their heads.

He peeled off a twenty-dollar-bill, and flung it with no good grace down upon the table.

“There,” he said, “that’s the last you’ll get till the trick is done.”

“Thankee, guv’ner; I knowed you’d see sense.  A man of your intelligous intellect, and——­”