osh, sent for a cab, and drove to number 134 Manchester Road,
which is one of a long row of small, two-storeyed brick houses, as clean
as the all-pervading smoke and damp will permit them to be, but not
exactly imposing in the eyes of a new-comer.

When the door opened in answer to his knock he saw by the light of a
lamp hanging from the ceiling of the narrow little hall a small, slight,
neatly-dressed figure, and a pair of dark, soft eyes looked up
inquiringly at him as he said:

"Is Mr Bowcock at home?"

"Yes, he is," replied a voice softly and very pleasantly tinged with the
Lancashire accent. Then in a rather higher key the voice said:

"Tom, ye're wanted."

As she turned away Lennard paid his cabman, and when he went back to the
door he found the passage almost filled by a tall, square-shouldered
shape of a man, and a voice to match it said:

"If ye're wantin' Tom Bowcock, measter, that's me. Will ye coom in? It's
a bit wet i' t' street."

Lennard went in, and as the door closed he said:

"Mr Bowcock, my name is Lennard--"

"I thou't it might be," interrupted the other. "You'll be Lord
Westerham's friend. I had a wire from his lordship's morning telling me
t' expect you to-night or to-morrow morning. You'll excuse t' kitchen
for a minute while t' missus makes up t' fire i' t' sittin'-room."

When Lennard got into the brightly-lighted kitchen, which is really the
living-room of small Lancashire houses, he found himself in an
atmosphere of modest cosy comfort which is seldom to be found outside
the North and the Midland manufacturing districts. It is the other side
of the hard, colourless life that is lived in mill and mine and forge,
and it has a charm that is all its own.

There was the big range, filling half the space of one of the
side-walls, its steel framings glittering like polished silver; the high
plate-rack full of shining crockery at one end by the door, and the low,
comfortable couch at the other; two lines of linen hung on cords
stretched under the ceiling airing above the range, and the solid deal
table in the middle of the room was covered with a snow-white cloth, on
which a pretty tea-service was set out.

A brightly polished copper kettle singing on the range, and a daintily
furnished cradle containing a sleeping baby, sweetly unconscious of wars
or world-shaking catastrophes, completed a picture which, considering
his errand, affected Gilbert Lennard very deeply.

"Lizzie" said the