ucted person can be steeped in
crime, and he did not see his way very clearly to accomplishing that
difficult and dangerous feat with Mark Ashburn.

So he hated Mark more intensely at the thought that, after all, his
past might be a blameless one. But even if this were not so, and he
had a secret after all, it might be long enough before some fortunate
chance gave Caffyn the necessary clue to it. Well, he would wait and
watch as patiently as he might till then, and however long the
opportunity might be in coming, when it came at last it should not
find him too indifferent or reluctant to make use of it.

While he thought out his position somewhat to this effect, his
landlady appeared to clear away the breakfast things; she was a
landlady of the better class, a motherly old soul who prided herself
upon making her lodgers comfortable, and had higher views than many of
her kind on the subjects of cookery and attendance. She had come to
entertain a great respect for Caffyn, although at first, when she had
discovered that he was 'one of them play-actors,' she had not been
able to refrain from misgivings. Her notions of actors were chiefly
drawn from the ramping and roaring performers at minor theatres, and
the seedy blue-chinned individuals she had observed hanging about
their stage-doors; and the modern comedian was altogether beyond her
experience.

So when she found that her new lodger was 'quite the gentleman, and
that partickler about his linen, and always civil and pleasant-spoken,
and going about as neat as a new pin, and yet with a way about him as
you could see he wouldn't stand no nonsense,' her prejudices were
entirely conquered.

'Good morning, Mr. Caffyn, sir,' she began; 'I come up to clear away
your breakfast, if you're quite done. Sarah Ann she's gone to chapel,
which she's a Primitive Methodist, she _says_, though she can't never
tell me so much as the text when she come back, and I tell her, "My
good gal," I ses to her, "what _do_ you go to chapel for?" and it's my
belief that as often as not she don't go near it. But there, Mr.
Caffyn, if a gal does her work about the 'ouse of a week, as I will
say for Sarah Ann----'

Caffyn groaned. Good Mrs. Binney had a way of coming in to discourse
on things in general, and it was always extremely difficult to get rid
of her. She did not run down on this occasion until after an
exhaustive catalogue, _a la_ Mrs. Lirriper, of the manners and customs
of a whole dyn