directly into the box-room itself, on one side of which was a dark recess holding a large cistern for water. To-night as I came to the foot of the stairs, I could hear the water gurgling through the pipes into the great tank, and caught an intermittent sound of rain upon the window in the sloping roof. A light shone from the top of the staircase; evidently somebody was there before me, and I blew out my candle ere climbing the ladder. It was late, the house was very still, and I wondered who had thus invaded my territory, for, as my bedroom was small, I kept many things stowed away in my big travelling trunk, and I often came up here to fetch what, at the moment, I required. When my eyes were level with the floor of the box-room I stopped suddenly, and I understood. The room had been turned into a bedchamber. Trunks and portmanteaus were piled along one side of the wall, and a small—very small—truckle bedstead stood underneath the skylight. One chair and a broken-down chest of drawers completed the furniture. A small square of looking-glass cracked across one corner, hung upon the wall. Martha herself knelt beside the bed, her face hidden in the pillow. Her loosened hair—crisp, and bright chestnut in colour—streamed over her coarse white night-gown; her bare feet, as she knelt, were thrust out from beneath the hem. I stood a moment, and then, for the girl had neither heard nor seen me, crept cautiously down the steep stairs back to the landing below. I would go without my book to-night, for Martha was saying her prayers, and, to judge by the convulsive movement of her shoulders, Martha was also crying.
II
A week later our new lady-boarder arrived, and a very fine lady she was. We, the older occupants of the establishment, shrank
