’She never had a childhood.  Girls of her condition seldom have.  Her father’s booked for the next world, and by an early stage too, unless he mends his manners, and that I hardly see how he’s to do.  The girl’s been to Lymington to see after a place.  Can’t have it.  Her father’s character is against her.  Unfortunate; for she’s a good girl.’

’I am sorry for her.  But come, to business.  How about the matter you wot of?’

‘Here are all the particulars,’ answered Lee, with an easy transition from a sentimental to a common-sense, business-like tone, and at the same time unscrewing the lid of a tortoise-shell tobacco-box, and taking a folded paper from it.  ’I keep these matters generally here; for if I were to drop such an article—­just now, especially—­I might as well be hung out to dry at once.’

I glanced over the paper.  ’Place, date, hour correct, and thoroughly to be depended upon you say, eh?’

’Correct as Cocker, I’ll answer for it.  It would be a spicy run for them, if there were no man-traps in the way.’

I placed the paper in my waistcoat-pocket, and then handed the doctor his preliminary fee.  The touch of gold had not its usual electrical effect upon him.  His nervous fit was coming on again.  ‘I wish,’ he puffed out—­’I wish I was safe out of this part of the country, or else that a certain person I know was transported; then indeed’—­

‘And who may that certain person be, doctor?’ demanded a grim-looking rascal, as he softly opened the door.  ‘Not me, I hope?’

I instantly recognised the fellow, and so did the doctor, who had again bounded from his chair, and was shaking all over as if with ague, whilst his very carbuncles became pallid with affright.  ‘You—­u—­u,’ he stammered—­’You—­u—­u, Wyatt:  God forbid!’

Wyatt was, I saw, muddled with liquor.  This was lucky for poor Lee.  ‘Well, never mind if it was me, old brick,’ rejoined the fellow; ’or at least you have been a brick, though I’m misdoubting you’ll die a pantile after all.  But here’s luck; all’s one for that.’  He held a pewter-pot in one hand, and a pipe in the other, and as he drank, his somewhat confused but baleful look continued levelled savagely along the pewter at the terrified doctor.  There was, I saw, mischief in the man.

‘I’d drink yours,’ continued the reckless scamp, as he paused for breath, drew the back of his pipe-hand across his mouth, and stared as steadily as he could in my face—­’I’d drink your health, if I only knew your name.’

’You’ll hear it plainly enough, my fine fellow, when you’re in the dock one of these days, just before the judge sends you to the hulks, or, which is perhaps the likelier, to the gallows.  And this scamp, too,’ I added, with a gesture towards Lee, whom I hardly dared venture to look at, ’who has been pitching me such a pretty rigmarole, is, I see, a fellow-rogue to yourself.  This house appears to be little better than a thieves’ rendezvous, upon my word.’