I was not much easier in my mind, now that the trial of breaking my bad news to Alicia was over.  That stranger who had called at the house an hour before me, weighed on my spirits.  It could not have been Doctor Dulcifer.  He would have gained admission.  Could it be the Bow Street runner, or Screw?  I had lost sight of them, it is true; but had they lost sight of me?

Alicia’s grief gradually exhausted itself.  She feebly raised her head, and, turning it away from me, hid her face.  I saw that she was not fit for talking yet, and begged her to go upstairs to the drawing-room and lie down a little.  She looked apprehensively toward the folding-doors that shut us off from the front parlor.

“Leave Mrs. Baggs to me,” I said.  “I want to have a few words with her; and, as soon as you are gone, I’ll make noise enough here to wake her.”

Alicia looked at me inquiringly and amazedly.  I did not speak again.  Time was now of terrible importance to us—­I gently led her to the door.

CHAPTER XIV.

As soon as I was alone, I took from my pocket one of the handbills which my excitable fellow-traveler had presented to me, so as to have it ready for Mrs. Baggs the moment we stood face to face.  Armed with this ominous letter of introduction, I kicked a chair down against the folding-doors, by way of giving a preliminary knock to arouse the housekeeper’s attention.  The plan was immediately successful.  Mrs. Baggs opened the doors of communication violently.  A slight smell of spirits entered the room, and was followed close by the housekeeper herself, with an indignant face and a disordered head-dress.

“What do you mean, sir?  How dare you—­” she began; then stopped aghast, looking at me in speechless astonishment.

“I have been obliged to make a slight alteration in my personal appearance, ma’am,” I said.  “But I am still Frank Softly.”

“Don’t talk to me about personal appearances, sir,” cried Mrs. Baggs recovering.  “What do you mean by being here?  Leave the house immediately.  I shall write to the doctor, Mr. Softly, this very night.”

“He has no address you can direct to,” I rejoined.  “If you don’t believe me, read that.”  I gave her the handbill without another word of preface.

Mrs. Baggs looked at it—­lost in an instant some of the fine color plentifully diffused over her face by sleep and spirits—­sat down in the nearest chair with a thump that seemed to threaten the very foundations of Number Two, Zion Place—­and stared me hard in the face; the most speechless and helpless elderly female I ever beheld.

“Take plenty of time to compose yourself ma’am,” I said.  “If you don’t see the doctor again soon, under the gallows, you will probably not have the pleasure of meeting with him for some considerable time.”

Mrs. Baggs smote both her hands distractedly on her knees, and whispered a devout ejaculation to herself softly.