the panel of the door, Sir. But here is a room where I
keep my jams, with double brick and patent locks, from sweet-toothed
lodgers. The 'scutcheon goes over the key-hole, General. Perhaps you
will see to that, while I roll up the carpet outside; and then, if any
retainers come, you will hear their footsteps."

"Bless the woman, what a temper she has!" whispered the Major, in dread
of her ears. "Is she gone, Erema? She wants discipline."

"Yes, she is gone," I said, trying to be lightsome; "but you are enough
to frighten any one."

"So far from that, she has quite frightened me. But never mind such
trifles. Erema, since I saw you I have discovered, I may almost say,
every thing."

Coming upon me so suddenly, even with all allowance made for the Major's
sanguine opinion of his own deeds, this had such effect upon my flurried
brain that practice alone enabled me to stand upright and gaze at him.

"Perhaps you imagined when you placed the matter in my hands, Miss
Castlewood," he went on, with sharp twinkles from the gables of his
eyes, but soft caresses to his whiskers, "that you would be left in the
hands of a man who encouraged a crop of hay under his feet. Never did
you or any body make a greater mistake. That is not my character, Miss
Castlewood."

"Why do you call me 'Miss Castlewood' so? You quite make me doubt my own
right to the name."

Major Hockin looked at me with surprise, which gladdened even more than
it shamed me. Clearly his knowledge of all, as he described it, did not
comprise the disgrace which I feared.

"You are almost like Mrs. Strouss to-day," he answered, with some
compassion. "What way is the wind? I have often observed that when one
female shows asperity, nearly all the others do the same. The weather
affects them more than men, because they know nothing about it. But to
come back--are you prepared to hear what I have got to tell you?"

I bowed without saying another word. For he should be almost the last of
mankind to give a lecture upon irritation.

"Very well; you wish me to go on. Perceiving how sadly you were upset by
the result of those interviews, first with Handkin, and then with Goad,
after leaving you here I drove at once to the office, studio, place of
business, or whatever you please to call it, of the famous fellow in
the portrait line, whose anagram, private mark, or whatever it is, was
burned into the back of the ivory. Handkin told me the fellow was dead,
or, of course,