id not, at the
moment, move him to admiration.

He looked fearfully round the empty hall and at the windows, black
against the night. Under the patter of the rain he heard
footsteps--distinctly. He went hastily clumping down the hall, and
along the passage to the kitchen.

His wife was setting his supper on the table.

"My God!" he said. "I haven't been so frightened since '70." And he
mopped his glistening forehead with a dish-cloth. It was not a clean
dish-cloth; but he did not care.

"Frightened? What of?" said his wife.

"Burglars! Cut-throats!" said Firmin.

He told her of the fears of M. Gournay-Martin, and of his own
appointment to the honourable and dangerous post of guard of the
chateau.

"God save us!" said his wife. "You lock the door of that beastly hall,
and come into the kitchen. Burglars won't bother about the kitchen."

"But the master's treasures!" protested Firmin. "He confided them to
me. He said so distinctly."

"Let the master look after his treasures himself," said Madame Firmin,
with decision. "You've only one throat; and I'm not going to have it
cut. You sit down and eat your supper. Go and lock that door first,
though."

Firmin locked the door of the hall; then he locked the door of the
kitchen; then he sat down, and began to eat his supper. His appetite
was hearty, but none the less he derived little pleasure from the meal.
He kept stopping with the food poised on his fork, midway between the
plate and his mouth, for several seconds at a time, while he listened
with straining ears for the sound of burglars breaking in the windows
of the hall. He was much too far from those windows to hear anything
that happened to them, but that did not prevent him from straining his
ears. Madame Firmin ate her supper with an air of perfect ease. She
felt sure that burglars would not bother with the kitchen.

Firmin's anxiety made him terribly thirsty. Tumbler after tumbler of
wine flowed down the throat for which he feared. When he had finished
his supper he went on satisfying his thirst. Madame Firmin lighted his
pipe for him, and went and washed up the supper-dishes in the scullery.
Then she came back, and sat down on the other side of the hearth,
facing him. About the middle of his third bottle of wine, Firmin's
cold, relentless courage was suddenly restored to him. He began to talk
firmly about his duty to his master, his resolve to die, if need were,
in defence of his interests, of his utte