ughly, and
is more up here than he is down in the country; he will recommend me to
some lodging in a street that, without being the height of fashion, is
at least passable. I have not the least wish to become a regular man
about town, but I should like to go into good society. One cannot be at
work incessantly."

The next morning the chief of the detective department told Mark that he
had decided to accept his offer.

"As you will receive no pay," he said, "I shall regard you as a sort of
volunteer. For the first two or three months you will spend your time in
going about with one or other of my men on his work. They will be able
to put you up to disguises. When you have once learned to know all the
thieves' quarters and the most notorious receivers of stolen goods,
you will be able to go about your work on your own account. All that
I require is that you shall report yourself here twice a day. Should I
have on hand any business for which you may appear to me particularly
well suited, I shall request you to at once undertake it, and from time
to time, when there is a good deal of business on hand, I may get you to
aid one of my men who may require an assistant in the job on which he is
engaged."

"I am sure I am very much obliged to you, sir," Mark said, "and will,
I can assure you, do my best in every way to assist your men in any
business in which they may be engaged."

"When will you begin?"

"It is Saturday today, sir. I think I will postpone setting to until
Monday week. My cousin and the lady in whose charge she is came up with
me on Thursday, and will be leaving town the end of next week, and
I should wish to escort them about while here. I will come on Monday
morning ready for work. How had I better be dressed?"

"I should say as a countryman. A convenient character for you to begin
with will be that of a man who, having got into a poaching fray, and
hurt a gamekeeper, has made for London as the best hiding place. You
are quite uncertain about your future movements, but you are thinking of
enlisting."

"Very well, sir, I will get the constable at Reigate, who knows me well,
to send me a suit. I might find it difficult to get all the things I
want here."

Accordingly, for the next week Mark devoted himself to the ladies.
Millicent, in her interest in the work that he was about to undertake,
had now quite got over her fit of ill temper, and the old cordial
relations were renewed. On the Friday he saw th