ng, and had got as far
as his boots, when there came a startling knock at the door. With one
boot in his hand and the other on his foot, the Colonel limped forward.
"I suppose it's that clerk has sent to say he's made some other mistake,"
and he flung wide the door, and then stood motionless before it, dumbly
staring at a figure on the threshold,--a figure with the fringed forehead
and pale blue eyes of her whom they had so lately turned out of that
room.

Shrinking behind the side of the doorway, "Excuse me, gentlemen," she
said, with a dignity that recalled their scattered senses, "but will you
'ave the goodness to look if my beads are on your table--O thanks,
thanks, thanks!" she continued, showing her face and one hand, as Basil
blushingly advanced with a string of heavy black beads, piously adorned
with a large cross. "I'm sure, I'm greatly obliged to you, gentlemen, and
I hask a thousand pardons for troublin' you," she concluded in a somewhat
severe tone, that left them abashed and culpable; and vanished as
mysteriously as she had appeared.

"Now, see here," said the Colonel, with a huge sigh as he closed the door
again, and this time locked it, "I should like to know how long this sort
of thing is to be kept up? Because, if it's to be regularly repeated
during the night, I'm going to dress again." Nevertheless, he finished
undressing and got into bed, where he remained for some time silent.
Basil put out the light. "O, I'm sorry you did that, my dear fellow,"
said the Colonel; "but never mind, it was an idle curiosity, no doubt.
It's my belief that in the landlord's extremity of bedlinen, I've been
put to sleep between a pair of tablecloths; and I thought I'd like to
look. It seems to me that I make out a checkered pattern on top and a
flowered or arabesque pattern underneath. I wish they had given me mates.
It 's pretty hard having to sleep between odd tablecloths. I shall
complain to the landlord of this in the morning. I've never had to sleep
between odd table-cloths at any hotel before."

The Colonel's voice seemed scarcely to have died away upon Basil's drowsy
ear, when suddenly the sounds of music and laughter from the invalid's
room startled him wide awake. The sick man's watchers were coquetting
with some one who stood in the little court-yard five stories below. A
certain breadth of repartee was naturally allowable at that distance; the
lover avowed his passion in ardent terms, and the ladies mocked hi