his stealthy
footsteps on the landing-place outside. Noting this latter circumstance,
Miss Miggs turned pale and shuddered, as mistrusting his intentions; and
more than once exclaimed, below her breath, 'Oh! what a Providence it
is, as I am bolted in!'--which, owing doubtless to her alarm, was a
confusion of ideas on her part between a bolt and its use; for though
there was one on the door, it was not fastened.

Miss Miggs's sense of hearing, however, having as sharp an edge as her
temper, and being of the same snappish and suspicious kind, very soon
informed her that the footsteps passed her door, and appeared to have
some object quite separate and disconnected from herself. At this
discovery she became more alarmed than ever, and was about to give
utterance to those cries of 'Thieves!' and 'Murder!' which she had
hitherto restrained, when it occurred to her to look softly out, and see
that her fears had some good palpable foundation.

Looking out accordingly, and stretching her neck over the handrail,
she descried, to her great amazement, Mr Tappertit completely dressed,
stealing downstairs, one step at a time, with his shoes in one hand
and a lamp in the other. Following him with her eyes, and going down a
little way herself to get the better of an intervening angle, she beheld
him thrust his head in at the parlour-door, draw it back again with
great swiftness, and immediately begin a retreat upstairs with all
possible expedition.

'Here's mysteries!' said the damsel, when she was safe in her own room
again, quite out of breath. 'Oh, gracious, here's mysteries!'

The prospect of finding anybody out in anything, would have kept Miss
Miggs awake under the influence of henbane. Presently, she heard the
step again, as she would have done if it had been that of a feather
endowed with motion and walking down on tiptoe. Then gliding out as
before, she again beheld the retreating figure of the 'prentice; again
he looked cautiously in at the parlour-door, but this time instead of
retreating, he passed in and disappeared.

Miggs was back in her room, and had her head out of the window, before
an elderly gentleman could have winked and recovered from it. Out he
came at the street-door, shut it carefully behind him, tried it with
his knee, and swaggered off, putting something in his pocket as he
went along. At this spectacle Miggs cried 'Gracious!' again, and then
'Goodness gracious!' and then 'Goodness gracious me!' and th