wished to
see her, had sufficiently composed her mind, I left the drawing-room.
It was vitally important that I should get back to the inn and make the
necessary arrangements for our departure the next morning, before the
primitive people of the place had retired to bed.

As I passed the back parlor door on my way out, I heard the voice of
Mrs. Baggs raised indignantly. The words "bottle!" "audacity!" and
"nerves!" reached my ear disjointedly. I called out "Good-by! till
to-morrow;" heard a responsive groan of disgust; then opened the front
door, and plunged out into the dark and rainy night.

It might have been the dropping of water from the cottage roofs while I
passed through the village, or the groundless alarm of my own suspicious
fancy, but I thought I was being followed as I walked back to the inn.
Two or three times I turned round abruptly. If twenty men had been at my
heels, it was too dark to see them. I went on to the inn.

The people there were not gone to bed; and I sent for the landlord to
consult with him about a conveyance. Perhaps it was my suspicious fancy
again; but I thought his manner was altered. He seemed half distrustful,
half afraid of me, when I asked him if there had been any signs, during
my absence, of those two gentlemen, for whom I had already inquired on
arriving at his door that evening. He gave an answer in the negative,
looking away from me while he spoke.

Thinking it advisable, on the whole, not to let him see that I noticed
a change in him, I proceeded at once to the question of the conveyance,
and was told that I could hire the landlord's light cart, in which he
was accustomed to drive to the market town. I appointed an hour for
starting the next day, and retired at once to my bedroom. There my
thoughts were enough. I was anxious about Screw and the Bow Street
runner. I was uncertain about the stranger who had called at Number Two,
Zion Place. I was in doubt even about the landlord of the inn. Never did
I know what real suffering from suspense was, until that night, Whatever
my apprehensions might have been, they were none of them realized the
next morning.

Nobody followed me on my way to Zion Place, and no stranger had called
there before me a second time, when I made inquiries on entering the
house. I found Alicia blushing, and Mrs. Baggs impenetrably wrapped up
in dignified sulkiness. After informing me with a lofty look that
she intended to go to Scotland with us, and to