till he comes?' she timidly asked, after hearing the bar-woman's reply. The servant civilly invited her to take a seat by the bar-fire, and I returned, without saying anything, to the smoking-room, rang the bell, and ordered a glass of brandy and water, and some biscuits. I had been seated a very short time only, when the quick, consequential step, and sharp, cracked voice of Dr Lee sounded along the passage; and after a momentary pause at the bar, his round, smirking, good-humoured, knavish face looked in at the parlour-door, where, seeing me alone, he winked with uncommon expression, and said aloud: 'A prime fire in the smoking-room, I see; I shall treat myself to a whiff there presently.' This said, the shining face vanished, in order, I doubted not, that its owner might confer with the young girl who had been inquiring for him. This Lee, I must observe, had no legal right to the prefix of doctor tacked to his name. He was merely a peripatetic quack-salver and vender of infallible medicines, who, having wielded the pestle in an apothecary's shop for some years during his youth, had acquired a little skill in the use of drugs, and could open a vein or draw a tooth with considerable dexterity. He had a large, but not, I think, very remunerative practice amongst the poaching, deer-stealing, smuggling community of those parts, to whom it was of vital importance that the hurts received in their desperate pursuits should be tended by some one not inclined to babble of the number, circumstances, or whereabouts of his patients. This essential condition Lee, hypocrite and knave as he was, strictly fulfilled; and no inducement could, I think, have prevailed upon him to betray the hiding-place of a wounded or suffering client. In other respects, he permitted himself a more profitable freedom of action, thereto compelled, he was wont apologetically to remark, by the wretchedly poor remuneration obtained by his medical practice. If, however, specie was scarce amongst his clients, spirits, as his rubicund, carbuncled face flamingly testified, were very plentiful. There was a receipt in full painted there for a prodigious amount of drugs and chemicals, so that, on the whole, he could have had no great reason to complain.

He soon reappeared, and took a chair by the fire, which, after civilly saluting me, he stirred almost fiercely, eyeing as he did so the blazing coals with a half-abstracted and sullen, cowed, disquieted look altogether unusual with him. At least wherever I had before seen him, he had been as loquacious and boastful as a Gascon.

'What is the matter, doctor?' I said. 'You appear strangely down upon your luck all at once.'

'Hush—hush! Speak lower, sir, pray. The fact is, I have just heard that a fellow is lurking about here—You have not, I hope, asked for me of any one?'

'I have not; but what if I had?'

'Why, you see, sir, that suspicion—calumny, Shakspeare says, could not be escaped, even if one were pure as snow—and more especially, therefore, when one is not quite so—so——Ahem!—you understand?'

'Very well, indeed. You would say, that when one is not actually immaculate—calumny, suspicion takes an earlier and firmer hold.'

'Just so; exactly—and, in fact—ha!'——

The door was suddenly thrown open, and the doctor fairly leaped to his feet with ill-disguised alarm. It was only the bar-maid, to ask if he had rung. He had not done so, and as it was perfectly understood that I paid for all on these occasions, that fact alone was abundantly conclusive as to the disordered state of his intellect. He now ordered brandy and water, a pipe, and a screw of tobacco. These ministrants to a mind disturbed somewhat calmed the doctor's excitement, and his cunning gray eyes soon brightly twinkled again through a haze of curling smoke.

'Did you notice,' he resumed, 'a female sitting in the bar? She knows you.'

'A young, intelligent-looking girl. Yes. Who is she?'

'Young!' replied Lee, evasively, I thought. 'Well, it's true she is young in years, but not in experience—in suffering, poor girl, as I can bear witness.'

'There are, indeed, but faint indications of the mirth and lightness of youth or childhood in those timid, apprehensive eyes of hers.'

'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.'

'Wyatt regarded me with a deadly scowl as he answered: 'Ay, ay, you're a brave cock, Master Warneford, upon your own dunghill. It may be my turn some day. Here, doctor, a word with you outside.' They both left the room, and I rang the bell, discharged the score, and was just going when Lee returned. He was still pale and shaky, though considerably recovered from the panic-terror excited by the sudden entrance of Wyatt.

'Thank Heaven, he's gone!' said the doctor; 'and less sour and suspicious than I feared him to be. But tell me, sir, do you intend walking from here to Hythe?'

'I so purpose. Why do you ask?'

'Because the young girl you saw in the bar went off ten minutes ago by the same road. She was too