ered back. "I want to go in quietly; let's see if
there's no other way. Run about the house, Zadok; I will submit to any
humiliation; only find me some entrance other than this." She was shaking
so and her face looked so ghastly in the moonlight that I was afraid to
leave her; but she made me a gesture of such command that I ran quickly
down the steps, and so round the house till I came to a shed over the top
of which I saw a window partly open.

Could I get her up on to the shed? I thought I could, and went hurrying
back to the big entrance where I had left her. She was still there,
shivering with the cold, but just as determined as ever. "Come," I
whispered; "I have found a way."

She gave me her hand and I led her around to the shed. She was like a
snow woman and her touch was ice itself. "Wait till I get a box or board
or something," I said. Hunting about, I found a box leaning against the
kitchen side, and, bringing it, I helped her up and soon had her on a
level with the window.

As she made her way in, she turned and whispered to me: "Go back
now. Carmel has a horse, and will see me home. You have served me
well, Zadok."

I nodded, and she vanished into the darkness. Then I should have gone;
but my curiosity was too great. I wanted to know just a little more. Two
women in this desolate and bitterly cold club-house! What did it mean?

I could not restrain myself from following her in and listening, for a
few minutes, to what they had to say. But I did not catch much of it; and
when I heard other sounds from some place below, and recognised these
sounds as a man's heavy footsteps coming up the rear stairs, I got a
fright at being where I should not be, and slipped into the first door I
found, expecting this man to come out and join the ladies.

But he did not; he just lingered for a moment in the hall I had left,
then I heard him clamber out of the window and go. I now know that this
was Mr. Arthur. But I did not know it then, and I was frightened for
the horse I had run off with, and so got out of the building as quickly
as I could.

And all might yet have been well if I had not found, lying on the snow at
the foot of the shed, a bottle of whiskey such as I had never drunk and
did not know how to resist. Catching it up, I ran about the house to
where I had left my rig. It was safe, and in my relief at finding it, I
knocked off the head of the bottle and took a long drink.

Then I drank again; then I sat d