hether I am
asleep? Leave your dog in your own room, _he_ snores, all Spanish bull-
dogs do.'

'Yes, that will serve,' said Logan. 'Merton, your mind is not wholly
inactive.'

They had some whisky and soda-water, and carried out the manoeuvres on
which they had decided.

Merton, unshod, silently re-entered the smoking-room, his shoes in his
hand; Logan as tactfully occupied Merton's room, and then they waited.
Presently, the smoking-room door being slightly ajar, Merton heard Logan
snoring very naturally; the Spanish bull-dog was yet more sonorous.
Gianesi came in, walked upstairs to his bedroom, and shut his door; in
half an hour he also was snoring; it was a nasal trio.

Merton 'drove the night along,' like Dr. Johnson, by repeating Latin and
other verses. He dared not turn on the light of his portable electric
lamp and read; he was afraid to smoke; he heard the owls towhitting and
towhooing from the woods, and the clock on the Castle tower striking the
quarters and the hours.

One o'clock passed, two o'clock passed, a quarter after two, then the
bell of the wireless machine rang, the machine began to tick; Merton sat
tight, listening. All the curtains of the windows were drawn, the room
was almost perfectly dark; the snorings had sometimes lulled, sometimes
revived. Merton lay behind the curtains on the window-seat, facing the
door. He knew, almost without the help of his ears, that the door was
slowly, slowly opening. Something entered, something paused, something
stole silently towards the wireless machine, and paused again. Then a
glow suffused the further end of the room, a disc of electric light,
clearly from a portable lamp. A draped form, in deep shadow, was exposed
to Merton's view. He stole forward on tiptoe with noiseless feet; he
leaped on the back of the figure, threw his left arm round its neck,
caught its right wrist in a grip of steel, and yelled:

'Mr. Eachain of the Hairy Arm, if I am not mistaken!'

At the same moment there came a click, the electric light was switched
on, Logan bounced on to the figure, tore away a revolver from the right
hand of which Merton held the wrist, and the two fell on the floor above
a struggling Highland warrior in the tartans of the Macraes. The figure
was thrown on its face.

'Got you now, Mr. Blake!' said Logan, turning the head to the light. 'D---
n!' he added; 'it is Gianesi! I thought we had the Irish minstrel.'

The figure only snarled, and