he hands, to find that it was after one.

Would they be sitting up for him at home? He could not help it. This
was his last night, it might be, for years--as he should try, on a
certain event happening, to avoid the place--perhaps for ever.

Suddenly a thought struck him. If the man he had seen was some
wrong-doer, and sought the house, he must, he knew, cross the bridge;
for Brace had from a distance often studied the configuration of the
grounds, and knew that from the side where he stood the bridge road was
the only way up to the mansion.

Young and active then, he started off over the short crisp turf at a
sharp run, purposely making a slight circuit, and arrived cautiously at
length by the bridge end, to find that he was too late to see the figure
pass, for he was already on the bridge, his step sounding hollowly upon
the old worn planks.

What could it mean--at that hour, too? Brace Norton hesitated no
longer; the thoughts of risk, and of being better on his way homeward,
were dismissed, and using all the caution he could, he tried to follow
the man.

But in vain the darkness prevented him from even catching another
glimpse; but that he was in the right track he knew, by coming suddenly
upon a pair of boots upon the grass, against one of which he kicked.

This seemed to point to the fact that it must be some one who well knew
the grounds, or he would not have trusted to the finding again of his
boots in the darkness. But what could it mean? Was there some
nefarious design afloat?--a robbery, for instance--and was this man in
league with more in the house?

These, and many such questions, troubled Brace Norton, as, momentarily
growing more and more excited, he strode on, avoiding flower-bed and
rustic vase, cautiously leaping gravel paths; and, at last, after
passing along two sides of the great square mansion, standing thoughtful
and discomfited.

On the side where he stood, there was on his left the old moat--the moat
which, in the front, had been expanded into the lake, advantage having
been taken of a low-lying tract of land by the baronet, to have it
flooded. The water, then, except on one side, shut in the pleasure
grounds, a wall enclosed them on the other; and, unless some door
happened to be open--which was unlikely at such an hour--the stranger
was either somewhere about the grounds, or had returned by way of the
bridge.

This last idea Brace dismissed at once, and determining that the