Mr. Wogan knocked at the door in the deepening dusk. The landlady opened. She knew Wogan, who, indeed, had occupied her chambers at one time. She smiled all over her jolly face:
'Mr. Hilton! Taller than ever, and welcome as ever.'
'Thank you, Mrs. Kilburne, I shall soon rival the Monument, but I can still get under your lintel by stooping. Where is Mr. Johnson?'
'Mr. Johnson? Oh, sir, what a life that poor gentleman lives. Out all night, home in the morning with mud or dust on him to the shoulder, and so to bed all day.'
'Then Mr. Johnson must be wakened. I can do it, were he one of the seven sleepers. George!' cried Mr. Wogan, lifting up his voice.
'Oh, sir, be quiet! A very dainty gentleman has my first floor, and he will be complaining of the noise. You always were that noisy, Mr. Hilton!' She walked down the passage as she spoke and threw open a door upon the right. 'Mr. Johnson, he has my ground floor, but you can't waken him, loud as you are, nor any man, so be quiet, Mr. Hilton.'
'Have I to weep for my poor friend's decease?' asked Wogan, as he entered the room.
'No, sir, or I would not be laughing at your nonsense.'
There was no doubt this was the Parson's lodging. For as Wogan stood just within the door, he saw by the window Mr. Kelly's scrutoire. It was the first thing indeed on which his eyes fell. He stepped across the room and threw open the lid. He saw a dispatch-box, and from the lock he knew it to be that in which Kelly kept safe the papers of the Bishop's plot.
'So there's another lodger in the house,' said Nick thoughtfully. He took up the box and tried the lid. It was locked. But Mr. Wogan would have preferred that the Parson should have kept the papers in the box which he had given him at Paris, of which the lock was stouter. That box he saw further back in the scrutoire, half hidden in news-sheets. But that too he found to be locked, and shaking it in his hand, was aware that, like the other, it held papers. The lid of the box was covered with dust, as though it had not been touched for months. Lady Oxford's letters had been locked up there. No doubt they were there still. Mr. Wogan wondered for a little at the strange sentiment which makes a man keep such dead tokens of a dead passion. He put the box back amongst the news-sheets, and turning to Mrs. Kilburne,