st! But they had suddenly lost all force
for the unhappy listener. The sight of that hole still shining brightly
before his eyes had distracted his thoughts and roused his liveliest
apprehensions. If that book should be allowed to lie where it had
fallen, then he was in for a period of uncertainty he shrank from
contemplating. Any moment his neighbour might look up and catch sight of
this hole bored in the backing of the shelves before him. Could the man
who had been guilty of submitting him to this outrage stand the strain
of waiting indefinitely for the moment of discovery? He doubted it, if
the suspense lasted too long.

Shifting his position, he placed his eye where his ear had been. He
could see very little. The space before him, limited as it was to the
width of the one volume withdrawn, precluded his seeing aught but what
lay directly before him. Happily, it was in this narrow line of vision
that Mr. Brotherson stood. He had resumed work upon his model and was
so placed that while his face was not visible, his hands were, and
as Sweetwater watched these hands and noticed the delicacy of their
manipulation, he was enough of a workman to realise that work so fine
called for an undivided attention. He need not fear the gaze shifting,
while those hands moved as warily as they did now.

Relieved for the moment, he left his post and, sitting down on the edge
of his cot, gave himself up to thought.

He deserved this mischance. Had he profited properly by Mr. Gryce's
teachings, he would not have been caught like this; he would have
calculated not upon the nine hundred and ninety-nine chances of that
book being left alone, but upon the thousandth one of its being the very
one to be singled out and removed. Had he done this,--had he taken pains
to so roughen and discolour the opening he had made, that it would look
like an ancient rat hole instead of showing a clean bore, he would have
some answer to give Brotherson when he came to question him in regard to
it. But now the whole thing seemed up! He had shown himself a fool
and by good rights ought to acknowledge his defeat and return to
Headquarters. But he had too much spirit for that. He would rather--yes,
he would rather face the pistol he had once seen in his enemy's hand.
Yet it was hard to sit here waiting, waiting--Suddenly he started
upright. He would go meet his fate--be present in the room itself when
the discovery was made which threatened to upset all his pla