clothes again--and left nothing to be seen of him but
the empty peak of the big nightcap standing up sturdily on end in the
middle of the bolster.

"What a young limb it is, ain't it?" says Benjamin's mother, giving
Trottle a cheerful dig with her elbow. "Come on! you won't see no more
of him to-night!"

"And so I tell you!" sings out a shrill, little voice under the
bedclothes, chiming in with a playful finish to the old woman's last
words.

If Trottle had not been, by this time, positively resolved to follow the
wicked secret which accident had mixed him up with, through all its
turnings and windings, right on to the end, he would have probably
snatched the boy up then and there, and carried him off from his garret
prison, bed-clothes and all. As it was, he put a strong check on
himself, kept his eye on future possibilities, and allowed Benjamin's
mother to lead him down-stairs again.

"Mind them top bannisters," says she, as Trottle laid his hand on them.
"They are as rotten as medlars every one of 'em."

"When people come to see the premises," says Trottle, trying to feel his
way a little farther into the mystery of the House, "you don't bring many
of them up here, do you?"

"Bless your heart alive!" says she, "nobody ever comes now. The outside
of the house is quite enough to warn them off. Mores the pity, as I say.
It used to keep me in spirits, staggering 'em all, one after another,
with the frightful high rent--specially the women, drat 'em. 'What's the
rent of this house?'--'Hundred and twenty pound a-year!'--'Hundred and
twenty? why, there ain't a house in the street as lets for more than
eighty!'--Likely enough, ma'am; other landlords may lower their rents if
they please; but this here landlord sticks to his rights, and means to
have as much for his house as his father had before him!'--'But the
neighbourhood's gone off since then!'--'Hundred and twenty pound,
ma'am.'--'The landlord must be mad!'--'Hundred and twenty pound,
ma'am.'--'Open the door you impertinent woman!' Lord! what a happiness
it was to see 'em bounce out, with that awful rent a-ringing in their
ears all down the street!"

She stopped on the second-floor landing to treat herself to another
chuckle, while Trottle privately posted up in his memory what he had just
heard. "Two points made out," he thought to himself: "the house is kept
empty on purpose, and the way it's done is to ask a rent that nobody will
pay."

"Ah, deary