ess, he could hear no
sound but the thick hammering of his own heart at the base of his
throat.

CHAPTER VIII

(I)

At half-past eleven o'clock Mrs. Partington came upstairs to the room
where the two men were still drinking, to make one more suggestion that
it was time to go to bed.

It was a dreary little room, this front bedroom on the first floor,
where Frank and the Major had slept last night in one large double bed.
The bed was pushed now close against the wall, the clothes still tumbled
and unmade, with various articles lying upon it, as on a table. A chair
without a back stood between it and the window.

The table where the two men still sat was pulled close to the fire that
had been lighted partly in honor of Mr. Partington and partly in honor
of Christmas, and was covered with a _debris_ of plates and glasses and
tobacco and bottles. There was a jam-jar filled with holly obtained from
the butcher's shop, in the middle of the table. There was very little
furniture in the room; there was a yellow-painted chest of drawers
opposite the door, and this, too, held a little regiment of bottles;
there was a large oleograph of Queen Victoria hanging above the bed,
and a text--for some inscrutable reason--was permitted to hang above the
fireplace, proclaiming that "The Lord is merciful and long-suffering,"
in Gothic letters, peeping modestly out of a wealth of painted
apple-blossoms, with a water-wheel in the middle distance and a stile.
On the further side of the fireplace was a washhand-stand, with a tin
pail below it, and the Major's bowler hat reposing in the basin. There
was a piece of carpet underneath the table, and a woolly sort of mat,
trodden through in two or three places, beside the bed.

* * * * *

Mrs. Partington coughed as she came in, so tremendous was the reek of
tobacco smoke, burning paraffin and spirits.

"Bless the men!" she said, and choked once more.

She was feeling comparatively light-hearted; it was a considerable
relief to her that Frank actually had not come back, though she never
had for one instant expected him to do so. But she didn't want any more
disturbances or quarrels, and, as she looked at the Major, who turned in
his chair as she came in, she felt even more relieved. His appearance
was not reassuring.

He had been drinking pretty steadily all day to drown his grief, and had
ended up by a very business-like supper with his landlord. T