Commotion at Mrs. Jinks\'s. Another afternoon kettle-drum on a grand scale. The two pastors, and more guests than could squeeze into the parlour. All the Foxwood ladies and an omnibus load or two from Basham.

Mr. Strange at in his drawing-room, on a three-legged stool; the one that supported Mrs. Jinks\'s tub on washing days. His chairs had been borrowed. He had good-naturedly given up every one: so Mrs. Jinks introduced the wooden stool. These crowded meetings below had amused him at first; but he was getting a little tired with the bustle and the noise. Every time the street door was knocked at, it shook his room; the talking below could be heard nearly as plainly as though he were taking part in it. Still it made a little diversion in Mr. Strange\'s solitary existence, if only to watch the arrival of the articles needed for the feast, and to smell the aroma of the coffee, made in the kitchen in a huge kettle. The supplies did not concern Mr. Cattacomb; his gentle flock took that on themselves, cost and all. There was no lack of good things, but rather a superabundance: since the Rev. Mr. Puff had come to augment the clerical force, the contributions had been too profuse. So that every one connected with the entertainment was in the seventh heaven of enjoyment and good humour; except Mrs. Jinks.

Perched on the hard stool, Mr. Strange, for lack of other employment, had noted the dainties as they came in. The wisest of us must unbend sometimes. A basket of muffins full to the brim; eleven sorts of jam--since it was discovered that the Reverend Guy loved preserves to satiety, the assortments had never failed; thirteen kinds of biscuits, trays of cake, glass pots of marmalade and honey, ripe rich fruits of all tempting colours, chocolate creams, candied oranges, lovely flowers.

Mr. Strange grew tired of looking; his head ached with the noise, his eyes with the splendour of the ladies\' dresses. For the company was arriving now, thick and threefold.

There had arisen a slight, a very slight, modicum of displeasure at Mr. Cattacomb. That zealous divine had been met four or five times walking with Mr. Moore\'s third daughter, Jemima: at the last lecture he had distinctly been seen man? uvring to get the young lady next to him. It gave offence. While he belonged to them all, all adored him; but let him once single out one of them for favour more than the rest, and woe betide his popularity. "And that little idiot of a Jemima Moore, too, who had not two ideas in her vain head!" as Jane St. Henry confidentially remarked. However, the Reverend Guy, upon receiving a hint from Miss Blake that he was giving umbrage, vowed and protested that it was all accident and imagination--that he hardly knew Miss Jemima from her sisters. So peace was restored, and the kettledrum grew out of it.

"I must have my chop all the same, Mrs. Jinks," said Mr. Strange to the widow; who had come upstairs to ask the loan of his sugar tongs, and looked very red and excited over it.

"In course, sir, you shall have it. It might be ten minutes later, sir, than ord\'nary, but I do hope you\'ll excuse it, sir, if it is. You see how I\'m drove with \'em."

"I see that there seems to be a large company arriving."

"Company!" returned Mrs. Jinks, the word causing her temper to explode; "I don\'t know how they\'ll ever get inside the room. I shall have to borrow a form from the school next door but one, and put it in the passage for some of \'em; and, when that and the chairs is filled, the rest must stand. Never as long as I live, will I take in a unmarried parson-gent again, if he\'s one of this here new sort that gets the ladies about him all day in church and gives drums out of it. Hark at the laughing! Them two parsons be in their glory."

"The ladies must be fond of drums, I should think, by their getting them up so frequently," remarked Mr. Strange.

"Drat the huzzies! they\'d be fond of fifes too if it brought \'em round Cattakin," was the widow\'s uncomplimentary rejoinder. "Better for \'em if they\'d let the man alone to drink his tea in quiet and write his sermons--which I don\'t believe ever does get writ, seeing he never has a minute to himself. Hark at that blessed door!" she continued; and indeed the knocking was keeping up a perpetual chorus. "If they\'d only turn the handle they could come in of theirselves. I said so to the Miss St. Henrys one cleaning day that I had been called to it six times while scrubbing down the kitchen stairs, and the young ladies answered me that they\'d not come in to Mr. Cattakin\'s without knocking, for the world."

"I suppose not," said Mr. Strange, slightly laughing.

"Hang that knocker again. There it goes! And me with all the drum on my shoulders. You should see the muffins we\'ve got to toast and butter downstairs, sir; your conscience \'ud fail you. Betsey Chaffin has come in to help me, and she and the girl is at it like steam. I\'m afeared that there stool\'s terrible hard for you, Mr. Strange, sir!" broke off the widow, in condolence.

"It\'s not as soft as velvet," was the reply. "But I\'m glad to oblige: and I am going out presently. Get my chop and tea up when you can."

Mrs. Jinks disappeared; the hum continued. Whether the two parsons, as Mrs. Jinks surmised, felt "in their glory," cannot be told: the ladies were certainly in theirs. These kettledrums at Mr. Cattacomb\'s were charmingly attractive.

When Mr. Strange did not return home for his chop at midday, he took it with his tea. His tray was yet before him when the kettledrum trooped out to attend vespers. At least, the company who had formed the drum. The two reverend gentlemen hastened on together a little in advance; Miss Blake led the van behind; and curious Foxwood ran to its windows to see.

Mr. Strange, who had nothing particular on his hands or mind that evening, looked after them. Example is infectious. He felt an inclination to follow in their wake--for it had not been his good fortune yet to make one of the worshippers at St. Jerome\'s; he had never indulged himself with as much as a peep inside the place. Accordingly, Mr. Strange started, after some short delay, and gained the edifice.

The first object his eyes rested on, struck him as being as ludicrous as an imp at the play. It was Tom Pepp in a conical hat tipped with red, and a red cross extending down his white garmented back. Tom Pepp stood near the bell, ready to tinkle it at parts of the service. It may as well be stated--lest earnest disciples of new movements should feel or take offence--that the form and make of the services at St. Jerome\'s were entirely Mr. Cattacomb\'s own; invented by himself exclusively, and not copied from any other standard, orthodox or unorthodox. The description of it is taken from facts. Mr. Strange, standing at the back near to Tom Pepp, enjoyed full view of all: the ladies prostrate on the floor, actually prostrate, some of them, the Reverend Guy facing them with the whites of his eyes turned up; Damon Puff on his knees, presenting his back to the room and giving every now and then a surreptitious stroke to his moustache. The detective had never seen so complete a farce in his life, as connected with religion. He thought the two reverend gentlemen might be shut up for a short term as mutinous lunatics, by way of receiving a little wholesome correction: he knew that if he had a daughter, he would shut her up as one, rather than she should make a spectacle of herself as these other girls were doing.

The services over, Tom Pepp set on at the bell to ring them out with all his might--for that was the custom. Most of them filed out; as did Mr. Damon Puff; and they went on their way. A few of them stopped in, for confession to Mr. Cattacomb.

It was growing dusk then. A train was just in, and had deposited some passengers at the station. One of them came along, walking quickly, as if in haste to get home. Happening to turn his head towards St. Jerome\'s as he passed it, attracted by the bell, he saw there, rather to his surprise, standing just outside the door, Mr. Moore\'s strong-minded sister. She peered at him in the twilight; she was no longer so quick of sight as she had been; and recognized Sir Karl Andinnian.

"What, is it you, Miss Diana!" he cried, stopping to hold out his hand. "Have you gone over to St. Jerome\'s?"

"I\'d rather go over to Rome, Sir Karl," was the candid answer. "I may lapse to St. Jerome\'s when I get childish perhaps, if it lasts so long. There\'s no answering for any of us when the mind fails."

Sir Karl laughed slightly. He saw before him the receding crowd turning down towards Foxwood village, and knew that vespers must be just over. The ringing of Tom Pepp\'s bell would have told him that. It was clanging away just above Miss Diana\'s head.

"You have been to vespers, then," remarked Sir Karl again, almost at a loss what to say, and unable to get away until Miss Diana chose to release his hand.

"Yes, I have been to what they call vespers," she rejoined tartly; "more shame for a woman of my sober years to say it, as connected with this place. Look at them, trooping on there, that Puff in the midst, who is softer than any apple-puff ever made yet!" continued Miss Diana, pointing her hand in the direction of the vanishing congregation. "They have gone; but there are five staying in for confession. Hark! Hark, Sir Karl! the folly is going to begin."

A sweet, silvery-toned bell rang gently within the room, and the clanging bell of Mr. Pepp stopped at the signal. The Reverend Guy had gone into the confessional box, and all other sounds must cease.

"I should think they can hardly see to confess at this hour," said Sir Karl jestingly.

"They light a tallow candle, I believe, and stick it in the vestry," said Miss Diana. "Five of them are staying to-night, as I told you: I always count. They go in one at a time and the others wait their turn outside the vestry. Do you think I am going to let my nieces stay here alone to play at that fun, Sir Karl? No: and so I drag myself here every confessional night. One of them, Jemima, is always staying. She is a little fool."

"It does not seem right," mused Sir Karl.

"Right!" ejaculated Miss Diana in an angry tone, as if she could have boxed his ears for the mild word. "It is wrong, Sir Karl, and doubly wrong. I do not care to draw the curb-rein too tightly; they are not my own children, and might rebel; but as sure as they are living, if this folly of stopping behind to confess is to go on, I shall tell the doctor of it. I think, Sir Karl--and you must excuse me for saying so to your face--that you might have done something before now, to put down the pantomime of this St. Jerome\'s."

"Only this very morning I was with St. Henry, asking him what I could do," was the reply. "His opinion is, that it will cease of itself when the cold weather comes on."

"Will it!" was the sarcastically emphatic retort. "Not if Cattacomb and the girls can help it. It\'s neither cold nor heat that will stop them!"

"Well, I am not sure about the law, Miss Diana. I don\'t know that St. Henry is, either."

"Look here, Sir Karl. If the law is not strong enough to put down these places, there\'s another remedy. Let all the clergy who officiate at them be upwards of fifty years old and married. It would soon be proved whether, or not, the girls go for the benefit of their souls."

Sir Karl burst into a laugh.

"It is these off-shoots of semi-religious places, started up here and there by men of vanity, some of whom, I venture to say it, are not licensed clergymen, that bring the shame and the scandal upon the true church," concluded Miss Diana. "There: don\'t let us talk of it further. Have you come from the train?"

"Yes. I had to run up to London for an hour or two to-day."

"Then I daresay you are tired. Give my love to your wife," added Miss Diana, as she wished Sir Karl good evening and turned into St. Jerome\'s again to watch over her niece Jemima.

Sir Karl strode onwards. He had just come home from his interview with Mr. Burtenshaw. Miss Diana Moore and her sentiments had served to divert his mind for a moment from his own troubles, but they were soon all too present again. The hum of the voices and sound of the footsteps came back to him from the crowd, pursuing its busy way to the village: he was glad to keep on his own solitary course and lose its echo.

Some one else, who had come out of St. Jerome\'s but who could not be said properly to pertain to the crowd, had kept on the solitary road--and that was Mr. Strange. He knew the others would take the direct way to the village and Mrs. Jinks\'s, and perhaps that was the reason why he did not. But there was no accounting for what Mr. Strange did: and one thing was certain--he had been in the habit lately of loitering in that solitary road a good deal after dusk had fallen, smoking his cigar there between whiles.

Sir Karl went on. He had nearly reached the Maze, though he was on the opposite side, when at a bend of the road there suddenly turned upon him a man with a cigar in his mouth, the end of it glowing like an ember. The smoker would have turned his head away again, and passed on, but Sir Karl stopped. He had recognized him: and his mind had been made up on the way from London, to speak to this man.

"I beg your pardon. Mr. Tatton, I think."

Mr. Tatton might possibly have been slightly taken to at hearing himself addressed by his own name: but there was no symptom of it in his voice or manner.

"The same, sir," he readily answered, taking the cigar from his mouth.

"I wish to say a few words to you," pursued Sir Karl. "As well perhaps say them now as later."

"Better, sir. No time like the present: it\'s all we can make sure of."

"Perhaps you know me, Mr. Tatton?"

"Sir Karl Andinnian--unless I am mistaken," replied the detective, throwing away his cigar.

Sir Karl nodded, but made no assent in words. He would have given a portion of his remaining life to discern whether this man of law, whom he so dreaded, knew, or suspected, that he had not a right to the title.

"I have just come from London," pursued Sir Karl. "I saw Mr. Burtenshaw there to-day. Finding that you were down here, I wished to ascertain whether or not you had come here in search of one Philip Salter. And I hear that it is so."

The officer made no remark to this. It might be, that he was uncertain how far he might trust Sir Karl. The latter observed the reticence: guessed at the doubt.

"We may speak together in perfect confidence, Mr. Tatton. But for me, you would not have been sent here at all. It was in consequence of a communication I made myself, that the suspicion as to Salter reached Scotland Yard."

"I know all about that, Sir Karl," was the reply. "To tell you the truth, I should have made my presence here at Foxwood known to you at once, and asked you to aid me in my search; but I was warned at Scotland Yard that you might possibly obstruct my work instead of aiding it, for that you wished to screen Salter."

"Scotland Yard warned you of that!" exclaimed Sir Karl.

"Yes. They had it from Grimley."

"The case is this," said Sir Karl, wishing with his whole heart he could undo what he had done. "Some short while back, I had a reason for making some enquiries respecting Philip Salter, and I went to my solicitors, Plunkett and Plunkett. They could not give me any information, and referred me to Mr. Burtenshaw. Burtenshaw introduced Grimley to me, and I saw them both twice. B............