.

"You clumsy fool!" Van de Greutz cried. "Get out of here, and don't
let me see your face, or hear your trampling ass-hoofs again! Do you
hear me, I won't have you in here again!"

The German was more sympathetic. "Have you hurt yourself?" he asked.

"No, Mijnheer, nothing," Julia answered; "only a little--my knees and
elbows." Had she been playing Othello, though she might not have
blacked herself all over, it is certain she would have carried the
black a long way below high water mark. This was no painless stage
stumble, but one with real bruises and a real thud.

The German had half risen; perhaps he thought of coming to help pick
up the pieces of broken cups that were scattered between the cupboard
and the chair. But he did not do so, for Herr Van de Greutz went on to
speak of his unstable compound.

"I treated it with--" he said, and, seeing this was something very
daring, the other's attention was caught.

Julia picked up the pieces alone, and carried them out on the tray,
and on the tray also she carried a bottle wrapped into a duster. It
was a wide-necked stoppered bottle, two-thirds full of white powder;
very much like the one she had brought in, but also very much like the
one that stood five from the end on the second shelf of the cupboard.

Soon after that she went up to her room, and took the bottle with her.
Then, when she had set it in a place of safety, and securely locked
the door, she broke into a silent laugh of delighted amusement. She
pictured to herself Herr Van de Greutz's face when, in company with
some other chemist, he found the ground rice, while his cook with the
"ass-hoofs" carried the explosive to her native land.

"What a thief I should make," was her own opinion of herself. "I
believe I could do as well as Grimm's 'Master Thief,' who stole the
parson and clerk." She took up the bottle and shook a little of the
contents into her hand; she had not the least idea how it was set off,
whether a blow, a fall, or heat would reveal its dangerous
characteristics. For a little she looked at it with curiosity and
satisfaction. But gradually the satisfaction faded; the excitement of
the chase was over, and the prize, now it was won, did not seem a
great thing. She set the bottle down rather distastefully, and turned
away.

"He could not have got the stuff," she told herself defiantly--"he"
was Rawson-Clew--but the next moment, with the justice she dealt
herself, she admitted, "Because he