aid
he'll put them into a cab and blow the expense, if the panto'
goes on too long for him to take 'em home."

"On to-night?" repeated Mrs. Bunting. "Whatever for?"

"Well, you see, The Avenger's always done 'em in couples, so to
speak. They've got an idea that he'll have a try again to-night.
However, even so, Joe's only on from midnight till five o'clock.
Then he'll go and turn in a bit before going off to fetch Daisy,
Fine thing to be young, ain't it, Ellen?"

"I can't believe that he'd go out on such a night as this!"

"What do you mean?" said Bunting, staring at her. Ellen had spoken
so oddly, as if to herself, and in so fierce and passionate a tone.

"What do I mean?" she repeated--and a great fear clutched at her
heart. What had she said? She had been thinking aloud.

"Why, by saying he won't go out. Of course, he has to go out.
Besides, he'll have been to the play as it is. 'Twould be a pretty
thing if the police didn't go out, just because it was cold!"

"I--I was thinking of The Avenger," said Mrs. Bunting. She looked
at her husband fixedly. Somehow she had felt impelled to utter
those true words.

"He don't take no heed of heat nor cold," said Bunting sombrely.
"I take it the man's dead to all human feeling--saving, of
course, revenge."

"So that's your idea about him, is it?" She looked across at her
husband. Somehow this dangerous, this perilous conversation between
them attracted her strangely. She felt as if she must go on with it.
"D'you think he was the man that woman said she saw? That young
man what passed her with a newspaper parcel?"

"Let me see," he said slowly. "I thought that 'twas from the bedroom
window a woman saw him?"

"No, no. I mean the other woman, what was taking her husband's
breakfast to him in the warehouse. She was far the most
respectable-looking woman of the two," said Mrs. Bunting impatiently.

And then, seeing her husband's look of utter, blank astonishment,
she felt a thrill of unreasoning terror. She must have gone suddenly
mad to have said what she did! Hurriedly she got up from her chair.
"There, now," she said; "here I am gossiping all about nothing when
I ought to be seeing about the lodger's supper. It was someone in
the train talked to me about that person as thinks she saw The
Avenger."

Without waiting for an answer, she went into her bedroom, lit the
gas, and shut the door. A moment later she heard Bunting go out to
buy the paper they had both forgot