CHAPTER VI.
'ENERY I Mrs.Slater was caretaker at No.

21 March.Square.Old Lady Cathcart lived with her middle-aged daughter at No.

21, and, during half the year, they were down at their place in Essex; during half the year, then, Mrs.Slater lived in the basement of No.

21 with her son Henry, aged six.
Mrs.Slater was a widow; upon a certain afternoon, two and a half years ago, she had paused in her ironing and listened.

"Something," she told her friends afterwards, "gave her a start--she couldn't say what nor how." Her ironing stayed, for that afternoon at least, where it was, because her husband, with his head in a pulp and his legs bent underneath him, was brought in on a stretcher, attended by two policemen.