ur before this, Mr. Paul Dangerfield was packing
two trunks in his little parlour, and burning letters industriously in
the fire, when his keen ear caught a sound at which a prophetic instinct
within him vibrated alarm. A minute or two before he had heard a
stealthy footstep outside. Then he heard the cook walk along the
passage, muttering to herself, to the hall-door, where there arose a
whispering. He glanced round his shoulder at the window. It was barred.
Then lifting the table and its load lightly from before him, he stood
erect, fronting the door, and listening intently. Two steps on tip-toe
brought him to it, and he placed his fingers on the key. But he
recollected a better way. There was one of those bolts that rise and
fall perpendicularly in a series of rings, and bar or open the door by a
touch to a rope connected with it by a wire and a crank or two.

He let the bolt softly drop into its place; the rope was within easy
reach, and with his spectacles gleaming white on the door, he kept
humming a desultory tune, like a man over some listless occupation.

Mr. Paul Dangerfield was listening intently, and stepped as softly as a
cat. Then, with a motion almost elegant, he dropt his right hand lightly
into his coat-pocket, where it lay still in ambuscade.

There came a puffing night air along the passage, and rattled the door;
then a quiet shutting of the hall-door, and a shuffling and breathing
near the parlour.

Dangerfield, humming his idle tune with a white and sharpening face, and
a gaze that never swerved, extended his delicately-shaped fingers to the
rope, and held it in his left hand. At this moment the door-handle was
suddenly turned outside, and the door sustained a violent jerk.

'Who's there?' demanded the harsh, prompt accents of Dangerfield,
suspending his minstrelsy. 'I'm busy.'

'Open the door--we've a piece of intelligence to gi'e ye.'

'Certainly--but don't be tedious.' (He drew the string, and the bolt
shot up). 'Come in, Sir.'

The door flew open; several strange faces presented themselves on the
threshold, and at the same instant, a stern voice exclaimed--

'Charles Archer, I arrest you in the king's name.'

The last word was lost in the stunning report of a pistol, and the
foremost man fell with a groan. A second pistol already gleamed in
Dangerfield's hand, and missed. With a spring like a tiger he struck the
hesitating constable in the throat, laying his scalp open against the
doo