Everything seemed to be in his favour. In the first place, there was evidently no suspicion, in the mind of any one he had met yet, that he was not the man he claimed to be—Dandy Chater; in the second place, the young servant who had first admitted him gave him the very clue he needed, and at the very outset. Coming into the room, immediately after Crowdy had finished reading the letter, this man asked:

“Excuse me, sir—but Mrs. Dolman would like to know whether Mr. Ogledon is coming down to-day?”

Philip Crowdy gathered his wandering wits, and faced the question. “Mrs. Dolman—that’ll be the housekeeper,” he thought, rapidly. “But who the devil is Mr. Ogledon?” After a moment’s pause, he looked up, and said aloud—“Can’t say, I’m sure. You’d better send Mrs. Dolman to me.”

The young man went away, and the housekeeper presently came bustling in. She was a trim, neat, precise old lady, with a certain dignity of manner belonging to her station. She inclined her head, and folded her hands, and hoped that “Master Dandy” was well.

“Old servant—been in the family all her life,” thought Crowdy. Aloud he said—“I really can’t say, Mrs. Dolman, whether Mr. Ogledon will be here to-day or not. By the way, Mrs. Dolman”—this, as a brilliant idea struck him—“I think I shall change my room—my bedroom, I mean.”

The good woman raised her hands in astonishment. “Change your room, Master Dandy! Why—I never heard the like! What’s the matter with the room, sir?”

“Oh—nothing the matter with it; only I want a change; one gets tired of anything. Just come upstairs with me, and I’ll show you what I mean.”

Mrs. Dolman would have stepped aside, in the doorway, to allow him to precede her; but he waved her forward impatiently, and she went on ahead, and up the broad staircase, with her gown held up delicately in two mittened hands.

“Now,” thought Philip Crowdy, with a chuckle, “I shall know where I sleep.”

The old lady went before him, and softly opened the door of a room on the left hand—Crowdy taking careful note of its position. It was a beautifully furnished room, with huge old-fashioned presses in it, and with everything arranged with a view to comfort.

“There couldn’t be a better room, Master Dandy,” urged the old lady—“and you’ve slept in it as long almost as I can remember. There’s your 

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