osed the Book. "I think I'll go to bed now,"
he said. "I am very, very tired. I've had a long and a very
weary day, Mrs. Bunting."

After he had disappeared into the back room, Mrs. Bunting climbed
up on a chair and unhooked the pictures which had so offended Mr.
Sleuth. Each left an unsightly mark on the wall--but that, after
all, could not be helped.

Treading softly, so that Bunting should not hear her, she carried
them down, two by two, and stood them behind her bed.

CHAPTER IV

Mrs. Bunting woke up the next morning feeling happier than she had
felt for a very, very long time.

For just one moment she could not think why she felt so different
--and then she suddenly remembered.

How comfortable it was to know that upstairs, just over her head,
lay, in the well-found bed she had bought with such satisfaction at
an auction held in a Baker Street house, a lodger who was paying two
guineas a week! Something seemed to tell her that Mr. Sleuth would
be "a permanency." In any case, it wouldn't be her fault if he
wasn't. As to his--his queerness, well, there's always something
funny in everybody. But after she had got up, and as the morning
wore itself away, Mrs. Bunting grew a little anxious, for there
came no sound at all from the new lodger's rooms. At twelve,
however, the drawing-room bell rang. Mrs. Bunting hurried upstairs.
She was painfully anxious to please and satisfy Mr. Sleuth. His
coming had only been in the nick of time to save them from terrible
disaster.

She found her lodger up, and fully dressed. He was sitting at the
round table which occupied the middle of the sitting-room, and his
landlady's large Bible lay open before him.

As Mrs. Bunting came in, he looked up, and she was troubled to see
how tired and worn he seemed.

"You did not happen," he asked, "to have a Concordance, Mrs.
Bunting?"

She shook her head; she had no idea what a Concordance could be,
but she was quite sure that she had nothing of the sort about.

And then her new lodger proceeded to tell her what it was he
desired her to buy for him. She had supposed the bag he had
brought with him to contain certain little necessaries of
civilised life--such articles, for instance, as a comb and brush,
a set of razors, a toothbrush, to say nothing of a couple of
nightshirts--but no, that was evidently not so, for Mr. Sleuth
required all these things to be bought now.

After having cooked him a nice breakfast Mrs. Bunting hurr