try
into my uncle's lodging undiscovered, or how, if discovered, to explain
my absence, I brushed against a wayfarer at the corner of the
Blackfriars Wynd.

''Tis a footpad,' I thought, for he was velvet-footed, and I heard no
tread on the pavement. I glanced narrowly at the swift-passing stranger,
and beneath the smouldering 'bowet' I had borrowed from the 'Meenister'
I recognised with a start the slight, shrunken figure of 'Brownie' with
his white, pathetic face. It was the swiftest of visions, yet I had seen
enough to give me a 'gliff,' _for the eyes were not those of 'Brownie,'
but of my uncle_.

This chance encounter reawoke all my previous apprehensions. The very
fact that I had only an eerie suspicion on which to build increased my
mental discomfort. There was something behind to which my watch and ward
had afforded me no clue.

Nothing more transpired for another few weeks when one night as I lay
awake meditating I heard a footstep on the stair without. It was late,
for my uncle had been out, and I had sat up reading, and had forgotten
how time was passing. As I continued to listen I heard a strange moaning
proceeding, I felt sure, from 'Brownie's' attic, which was situate a
foot or two above my chamber on the top turn of the newel stairway. I
had recognised, I thought, the tread on the stairs, for my uncle's
footstep was peculiar, since he had a slight limp; it was this that had
aroused my attention and reawakened my apprehension.

The moaning had been that of a dumb animal, and I had heard it once or
twice before when poor 'Brownie' had been in pain.

Stealing out of my room a-tiptoe I very gently laid my hand on the
'sneck' of 'Brownie's' den and tried to lift it without noise.

But, though it lifted, the door was 'steekit' from within.

There was no sound to be heard therein; I stood there with pricked ear,
but could learn nothing by listening. Perhaps I might be able to discern
somewhat through the aperture above the pin of the 'sneck.' 'Brownie's'
den had, as I knew, a window in its _tourelle_, and as the night was
moonlit though stormy, I might in a flitting moonbeam perhaps espy
somewhat.

Stooping, I placed my eye to the tiny slit, and waited impatiently for a
gleam of white light that might penetrate from the westward airt which
it faced.

A quarter of an hour, perhaps, elapsed; I could see nothing, and my
patience was almost exhausted, when on a sudden the beam of moonlight so
earnestly ex