“The police!  You might as well go to the beadle.  No; change your lodging, if you think they know it.  Don’t let them track you home.  Buy a brace of pistols, and, if they catch you in a dark place, and try to do you, give them a barrel or two before they can strike a blow.  No one of them will ever tell the police, not if you shot his own brother dead at that game.  The law is a dead letter here, sir.  You’ve nothing to expect from it, and nothing to fear.”

“Good heavens!  Am I in England?”

“In England?  No.  You are in Hillsborough.”

This epigram put Cheetham in good humor with himself, and, when Henry told him he did not feel quite safe, even in his own forge, nor in his handling-room, and gave his reasons, “Oh,” said cheerful Cheetham, “that is nothing.  Yours is a box-lock; the blackguard will have hid in the works at night, and taken the lock off, left his writing, and then screwed the lock on again:  that is nothing to any Hillsborough hand.  But I’ll soon stop that game.  Go you to Chestnut Street, and get two first-class Bramah locks.  There’s a pocket knife forge upstairs, close to your handling-room.  I’ll send the pocket-knife hand down-stairs, and you fasten the Bramah locks on both doors, and keep the keys yourself.  See to that now at once:  then your mind will be easy.  And I shall be in the works all day now, and every day:  come to me directly, if there is any thing fresh.”

Henry’s forge was cold, by this time; so he struck work, and spent the afternoon in securing his two rooms with the Bramah locks.  He also took Cheetham’s advice in another particular.  Instead of walking home, he took a cab, and got the man to drive rapidly to a certain alley.  There he left the cab, ran down the alley, and turned a corner, and went home round about.  He doubled like a hare, and dodged like a criminal evading justice.

But the next morning he felt a pleasing sense of security when he opened his forge-room with the Bramah key, and found no letters nor threats of any kind had been able to penetrate.

Moreover, all this time you will understand he was visiting “Woodbine Cottage” twice a week, and carving Grace Carden’s bust.

Those delightful hours did much to compensate him for his troubles in the town, and were even of some service to him in training him to fence with the trades of Hillsborough:  for at “Woodbine Villa” he had to keep an ardent passion within the strict bounds of reverence, and in the town he had constantly to curb another passion, wrath, and keep it within the bounds of prudence.  These were kindred exercises of self-restraint, and taught him self-government beyond his years.  But what he benefited most by, after all, was the direct and calming effect upon his agitated heart, and irritated nerves, that preceded, and accompanied, and followed these sweet, tranquilizing visits.  They were soft, solacing, and soothing; they were periodical and certain, he could count on leaving his cares and worries, twice every week, at the door of that dear villa; and, when he took them up again, they were no longer the same; heavenly balm had been shed over them, and over his boiling blood.