down the
street, and the latter were on the door-step. He then walked briskly up
the path to the house; but instead of mounting the steps, he turned to
the left and lay down under the library windows behind a clump of
lilacs.

"If they catch me here," he thought, "they can only take me for a tramp
and give me the grand bounce."

The windows opened upon a stone platform a few feet from the ground. He
could hear the sound of voices within. At last he heard the men rise,
push back their chairs, and say "Good-night." He heard their heavy
shoes on the front steps. "Now for it," he whispered. But at that
moment a belated tenant came in. He wanted to talk of some repairs to
his house. Offitt lay down again, resting his head on his arm. The soft
turf, the stillness, the warmth of the summer night lulled him into
drowsiness. In spite of the reason he had for keeping awake, his eyes
were closing and his senses were fading, when a shrill whistle startled
him into broad wakefulness. It was the melancholy note of a
whippoorwill in the branches of a lime-tree in the garden. Offitt
listened for the sound of voices in the library. He heard nothing. "Can
I have slept through----no, there is a light." A shadow fell across the
window. The heavy tread of Budsey approached. Farnham's voice was
heard: "Never mind the windows, Budsey. I will close them and the front
door. I will wait here awhile; somebody else may come. You can go to
bed."

"Good-night, sir."

"Good-night."

Offitt waited only a moment. He rose and looked cautiously in at the
window. Farnham was seated at his desk. He had sorted, in the
methodical way peculiar to men who have held command in the army, the
papers which he had been using with his tenants and the money he had
received from them.

They were arranged on the desk before him in neat bundles, ready to be
transferred to the safe, across the room. He had taken up his pen to
make some final indorsement.

Offitt drew off his shoes, leaped upon the platform, and entered the
library as swiftly and noiselessly as a panther walking over sand.

XVII.

IN AND OUT OF WINDOWS.

Alice Belding was seated before her glass braiding her long hair. Her
mother had come in from her own room, as her custom often was, to chat
with her daughter in the half hour before bed-time. It gratified at
once her maternal love and her pride to watch the exquisite beauty of
her child, as she sat, dressed in a white wrapper th