ldn't come off
his finger? By Jove! That's very rum. Are there any more mysteries,
Mary, connected with this house?"

She hesitated and then in a very low voice answered:

"Oh, yes, sir; there was one that gave me even a worse turn!"

By this time her visitor seemed to have given up all immediate thoughts
of writing his note to Mr. Rattar. He turned his back to the table and
looked at her with benevolent calm.

"Let's hear it, Mary," he said gently.

And then she told him the story of that dreadful night when the unknown
visitor came for the box of old papers. He gazed at her, listening very
attentively, and then in a soothing voice asked her several questions,
more particularly when all these mysterious events occurred.

"And are these all your troubles now, Mary?" he enquired.

He asked so sympathetically that at last she even ventured to tell him
her latest trouble. Till he fairly charmed it out of her, she had shrunk
from telling him anything that seemed to reflect directly on her master
or to be a giving away of his concerns. But now she confessed that Mr.
Rattar's conduct, Mr. Rattar's looks, and even Mr. Rattar's very
infrequent words had been troubling her strangely. How or why his looks
and words should trouble her, she knew not precisely, and his conduct,
generally speaking, she admitted was as regular as ever.

"You don't mean that just now and then he takes a wee drop too much?"
enquired her visitor helpfully.

"Oh, no, sir," said she, "the master never did take more than what a
gentleman should, and he's not a smoking gentleman either--quite a
principle against smokers, he has, sir. Oh, it's nothing like that!"

She looked over her shoulder fearfully as though the walls might repeat
her words to the master, as she told him of the curious and disturbing
thing. Mr. Rattar had been till lately a gentleman of the most exact
habits, and then all of a sudden he had taken to walking in his garden
in a way he never did before. First she had noticed him, about the time
of the burglary and the removal of the papers, walking there in the
mornings. That perhaps was not so very disturbing, but since then he had
changed this for a habit of slipping out of the house every night--every
single night!

"And walking in the garden!" exclaimed Mr. Carrington.

"Sometimes I've heard his footsteps on the gravel, sir! Even when it has
been raining I've heard them. Perhaps sometimes he goes outside the
garden, but I'v