other foot to the left
and it would have been a goner."

"Sounds queer."

"And, talking of that picture, I looked in on him about a couple of
afternoons later, and he'd taken it down from the wall and laid it on
the floor and was staring at it in a dashed marked sort of manner. That
was peculiar, what?"

"On the floor?"

"On the jolly old carpet. When I came in, he was goggling at it in a
sort of glassy way. Absolutely rapt, don't you know. My coming in gave
him a start--seemed to rouse him from a kind of trance, you know--and he
jumped like an antelope; and, if I hadn't happened to grab him, he would
have trampled bang on the thing. It was deuced unpleasant, you know. His
manner was rummy. He seemed to be brooding on something. What ought I to
do about it, do you think? It's not my affair, of course, but it
seams to me that, if he goes on like this, one of these days he'll be
stabbing, someone with a pickle-fork."

To Archie's relief, his father-in-law's symptoms showed no signs of
development. In fact, his manner reverted to the normal once more, and
a few days later, meeting Archie in the lobby of the hotel, he seemed
quite cheerful. It was not often that he wasted his time talking to his
son-in-law, but on this occasion he chatted with him for several minutes
about the big picture-robbery which had formed the chief item of news
on the front pages of the morning papers that day. It was Mr. Brewster's
opinion that the outrage had been the work of a gang and that nobody was
safe.

Daniel Brewster had spoken of this matter with strange earnestness, but
his words had slipped from Archie's mind when he made his way that night
to his father-in-law's suite. Archie was in an exalted mood. In the
course of dinner he had had a bit of good news which was occupying his
thoughts to the exclusion of all other matters. It had left him in a
comfortable, if rather dizzy, condition of benevolence to all created
things. He had smiled at the room-clerk as he crossed the lobby, and if
he had had a dollar, he would have given it to the boy who took him up
in the elevator.

He found the door of the Brewster suite unlocked which at any other time
would have struck him as unusual; but to-night he was in no frame of
mind to notice these trivialities. He went in, and, finding the room
dark and no one at home, sat down, too absorbed in his thoughts to
switch on the lights, and gave himself up to dreamy meditation.

There are certain