That he had a propensity for prying into the private affairs of his neighbours near and distant, there could be little doubt about.  Mr. Pike, however, was not destined on this one occasion to reap any substantial reward.  The kitchen appeared to be wrapped in perfect silence.  Satisfying himself as to this, he next took off his heavy shoes, stole past the back door, and so round the clerk’s house to the front.  Very softly indeed went he, creeping by the wall, and emerging at last round the angle, by the window of the best parlour.  Here, most excessively to Mr. Pike’s consternation, he came upon a lady doing exactly what he had come to do—­namely, stealthily listening at the window to anything there might be to hear inside.

The shrill scream she gave when she found her face in contact with the wild intruder, might have been heard over at Dr. Ashton’s.  Clerk Gum, who had been quietly writing in his office, came out in haste, and recognized Mrs. Jones, the wife of the surly porter at the station, and step-mother to the troublesome young servant, Rebecca.  Pike had totally disappeared.

Mrs. Jones, partly through fright, partly in anger arising from a long-standing grievance, avowed the truth boldly:  she had been listening at the parlour-shutters ever since she went out of the house ten minutes ago, and had been set upon by that wolf Pike.

“Set upon!” exclaimed the clerk, looking swiftly in all directions for the offender.

“I don’t know what else you can call it, when a highway robber—­a murderer, if all tales be true—­steals round upon you without warning, and glares his eyes into yours,” shrieked Mrs. Jones wrathfully.  “And if he wasn’t barefoot, Gum, my eyes strangely deceived me.  I’d have you and Nancy take care of your throats.”

She turned into the house, to the best parlour, where the clerk’s wife was sitting with a visitor, Mirrable.  Mrs. Gum, when she found what the commotion had been about, gave a sharp cry of terror, and shook from head to foot.

“On our premises!  Close to our house!  That dreadful man!  Oh, Lydia, don’t you think you were mistaken?”

“Mistaken!” retorted Mrs. Jones.  “That wild face isn’t one to be mistaken:  I should like to see its fellow in Calne.  Why Lord Hartledon don’t have him taken up on suspicion of that murder, is odd to me.”

“You’d better hold your tongue about that suspicion,” interposed Mirrable.  “I have cautioned you before, I shouldn’t like to breathe a word against a desperate man; I should go about in fear that he might hear of it, and revenge himself.”

In came the clerk.  “I don’t see a sign of any one about,” he said; “and I’m sure whoever it was could not have had time to get away.  You must have been mistaken, Mrs. Jones.”

“Mistaken in what, pray?”

“That any man was there.  You got confused, and fancied it, perhaps.  As to Pike, he’d never dare come on my premises, whether by night or day.  What were you doing at the window?”