“I can’t make it out,” said Mr. Dick, shaking his head. “There’s something wrong, somewhere. However, it was very soon after the mistake was made of putting some of the trouble out of King Charles’s head into my head, that the man first came. I was walking out with Miss Trotwood after tea, just at dark, and there he was, close to our house.”

“Walking about?” I inquired.

“Walking about?” repeated Mr. Dick. “Let me see, I must recollect a bit. N-no, no; he was not walking about.”

I asked, as the shortest way to get at it, what he was doing.