And two years had gone by since then, and one reason why I had no objection to earning Mr.Gilverthwaite's ten pounds was that Maisie and I meant to wed as soon as my salary was lifted to three pounds a week, as it soon was to be, and we were saving money for our furnishing--and ten pounds, of course, would be a nice help.
So presently I went along the street to Dunlop's and called Maisie out, and we went down to the walls by the river mouth, which was a regular evening performance of ours.

And in a quiet corner, where there was a seat on which we often sat whispering together of our future, I told her that I had to do a piece of business for our lodger that night and that the precise nature of it was a secret which I must not let out even to her.
"But here's this much in it, Maisie," I went on, taking care that there was no one near us that could catch a word of what I was saying; "I can tell you where the spot is that I'm to do the business at, for a fine lonely spot it is to be in at the time of night I'm to be there--an hour before midnight, and the place is that old ruin that's close by where Till meets Tweed--you know it well enough yourself." I felt her shiver a bit at that, and I knew what it was that was in her mind, for Maisie was a girl of imagination, and the mention of a lonely place like that, to be visited at such an hour, set it working.
"Yon's a queer man, that lodger of your mother's, Hughie," she said.

"And it's a strange time and place you're talking of.

I hope nothing'll come to you in the way of mischance." "Oh, it's nothing, nothing at all!" I hastened to say.

"If you knew it all, you'd see it's a very ordinary business that this man can't do himself, being kept to his bed.