tly and slowly against the door
with a clenched hand. It was a noise he had heard before; his
faculties strained themselves to identify it. Then a second figure
appeared, smaller than the first, moving with a strange gait, and he
knew. It was the cripple, Mowbray's brother-in-law, and it was his
leather-shod crutch which had tapped on the floor of the passage. The
two figures moved down the yard together, and presently, as they
passed from the shadow of the house and came within the feeble light
of a lamp that burned at the mouth of the alley, he saw that the
taller of the two was Tom Mowbray's wife. They found the gate in the
fence and opened it, manifestly hesitating at the strident creaking
it made, and passed through. At no moment were they clear to see, but
to Goodwin's eyes their very gait was in some way expressive of a
tragic solemnity that clad them.

He remained silent in his place as they went along the alley towards
the street, passing him at arm's length on the other side of the
fence. Their footsteps were muffled on the unpaved ground of the
alley, but there was another noise which he heard the noise of the
woman weeping weeping brokenly and openly. Then the cripple's harsh,
hopeless voice spoke.

"Anyway, we're alone together again for a bit, Sally," he croaked.

The woman checked her sobs to answer. "Yes, honey," she replied.

Goodwin waited till the tapping of the crutch had receded. "So
they've quit him at last," he reflected. "And" he stepped forth from
his hiding place briskly "they've left the door open. Now for Tom
Mowbray!"

Once within the door he was no longer careful to be silent. The house
was dark, and he had to grope his way to the stairs, or he would have
run at and up them at the top of his speed. The place seemed full of
doors closed upon sleeping people; someone on an upper floor was.
snoring with the noise of a man strangling. He moved among them
awkwardly, but he knew which was the room that harbored his man. The
door of it was before him at last. He fumbled and found the handle.

"Now!" he said aloud, and thrust it open.

His vision of vengeance had shown him the room that was to be its
arena, but this room was dark and he could not see it. He had not
allowed for that. He swore as the door swung to behind him.

"Mowbray!" he called. "Mowbray, you blasted robber! Wake up an' get
what's comin' to you!"

There was no answering stir to tell him the direction in which to
spring