Mrs. Gutch paused to take a little refreshment from her pocket-flask, with an apologetic remark as to the state of her heart.  She resumed, presently, apparently refreshed.

“Well, gentlemen, that notion, about Maitland’s taking the child away from her seemed to get on her mind, and she used to talk to me at times about it, always saying the same thing—­that Maitland should never have him.  And one day she told me she was going to London to see lawyers about it, and she went, and she came back, seeming more satisfied, and a day or two afterwards, there came a gentleman who looked like a lawyer, and he stopped a day or two, and he came again and again, until one day she came to me, and she says, ’You don’t know who that gentleman is that’s come so much lately?’ she says.  ‘Not I,’ I says, ‘unless he’s after you.’  ‘After me!’ she says, tossing her head:  ’That’s the gentleman that ought to have married my poor sister if that scoundrel Maitland hadn’t tricked her into throwing him over!’ ’You don’t say so!’ I says.  ’Then by rights he ought to have been the child’s pa!’ ‘He’s going to be a father to the boy,’ she says.  ’He’s going to take him and educate him in the highest fashion, and make a gentleman of him,’ she says, ‘for his mother’s sake.’  ‘Mercy on us!’ says I.  ‘What’ll Maitland say when he comes for him?’ ’Maitland’ll never come for him,’ she says, ’for I’m going to leave here, and the boy’ll be gone before then.  This is all being done,’ she says, ’so that the child’ll never know his father’s shame—­he’ll never know who his father was.’  And true enough, the boy was taken away, but Maitland came before she’d gone, and she told him the child was dead, and I never see a man so cut up.  However, it wasn’t no concern of mine.  And so there’s so much of the secret, gentlemen, and I would like to know if I ain’t giving good value.”

“Very good,” said the proprietor.  “Go on.”  But Spargo intervened.

“Did you ever hear the name of the gentleman who took the boy away?” he asked.

“Yes, I did,” replied Mrs. Gutch.  “Of course I did.  Which it was Elphick.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

STILL SILENT

Spargo dropped his pen on the desk before him with a sharp clatter that made Mrs. Gutch jump.  A steady devotion to the bottle had made her nerves to be none of the strongest, and she looked at the startler of them with angry malevolence.

“Don’t do that again, young man!” she exclaimed sharply.  “I can’t a-bear to be jumped out of my skin, and it’s bad manners.  I observed that the gentleman’s name was Elphick.”

Spargo contrived to get in a glance at his proprietor and his editor—­a glance which came near to being a wink.

“Just so—­Elphick,” he said.  “A law gentleman I think you said, Mrs. Gutch?”

“I said,” answered Mrs. Gutch, “as how he looked like a lawyer gentleman.  And since you’re so particular, young man, though I wasn’t addressing you but your principals, he was a lawyer gentleman.  One of the sort that wears wigs and gowns—­ain’t I seen his picture in Jane Baylis’s room at the boarding-house where you saw her this morning?”