d been in; and the steward said
since six o'clock. It was then eight.

Northwick was not waiting for Pinney on the wharf, and he climbed
disconsolately to his hotel in the Upper Town. He bet, as a last
resource, that Northwick would not be waiting there for him, to give him
a pleasant surprise, and he won his disastrous wager.

It did not take his wife so long to understand what had happened, as
Pinney thought it would. She went straight to the heart of the mystery.

"Did you say anything about his going back?"

"Why--in a general way," Pinney admitted, ruefully.

"Then, of course, that made him afraid of you. You broke your word, Ren,
and it's served you right."

His wife was walking to and fro with the baby in her arms; and she said
it was sick, and she had been up all night with it. She told Pinney he
had better go out and get a doctor.

It was all as different from the return Pinney had planned as it could
be.

"I believe the old fool is crazy," he said, and he felt that this was
putting the mildest possible construction upon Northwick's behavior.

"He seems to have known what he was about, anyway," said Mrs. Pinney,
coldly. The baby began to cry. "Oh, _do_ go for the doctor!"

V.

The day was still far from dawning when Northwick crept up the silent
avenue, in the dark of its firs, toward his empty house, and stealthily
began to seek for that home in it which had haunted his sleeping and
waking dreams so long. He had a kind of ecstacy in the risk he ran; a
wild pleasure mixed with the terror he felt in being what and where he
was. He wanted to laugh when he thought of the perfect ease and safety
of his return. At the same time a thrilling anxiety pierced him through
and through, and made him take all the precautions of a thief in the
night.

A thief in the night: that was the phrase which kept repeating itself to
him, till he said it over under his breath, as he put off his shoes, and
stole up the piazza-steps, and began to peer into the long windows, at
the blackness within. He did not at once notice that the shutters were
open, with an effect of reckless security or indifference, which struck
a pang to his heart when he realized it. He felt the evil omen of this
faltering in the vigilance which had once guarded his home, and which he
had been the first to break down, and lay it open to spoil and waste. He
tried the windows; he must get in, somehow, and he did not dare to ring
at the door, o