nest
passage in the _Grave_ is impudently stolen from Dryden, and marred
in the stealing. But I thank Heaven, ma'am, that I can read any
printed matter; and when Blair disgusts me I can always take a
satisfactory revenge by turning him into Latin Elegiacs; by turning
him, so to speak, in his Grave,' concluded the doctor grimly.

This routed the lady, but she managed to get in the last word.
'Well, I can't pretend to understand you and your learning,' she
answered tartly; 'but since we seem to be thanking Heaven, I'll thank
it that I have a fire lit in my bedroom. It's the room just
overhead, and I'm going to ask Tryphena to sleep with me when she has
put up the bolts. Or, maybe, we shall sit up there for a while and
talk. But anyhow, we are light sleepers, the both of us, and if
there's any trouble you have only to call. Good-night.'

'Good-night, ma'am!' said Doctor Unonius, and opened the door for
her. Left alone, he went back to the table and began to turn the
pages of Blair.

CHAPTER VI.

Doctor Unonius had drawn the table close beside an elbow-chair to the
right of the fireplace. The excuse he made to himself was that, with
a bright fire burning, he could the better see to read by blending
its blaze with the light of the lamp. But it may be conjectured
that, having disposed himself thus comfortably, he indulged in a nap.
A strange sound fetched him out of it with a bounce. He leapt to his
feet, and stood for a moment stupidly rubbing his eyes. The fire had
burnt itself low. Blair's _Grave_ lay face-downward on the
hearth-rug, whither it had slipped from his knee. The clock in the
corner ticked at its same deliberate pace, but its hands pointed to
twenty minutes past two.

What was the sound? Or, rather--since it no longer continued--what
had it been? As it seemed to him, it had resembled the beat of
horses' hoofs at a gallop; a stampede almost. It could not have gone
past on the high-road, for the noise had never been loud: yet it
seemed to come from the high-road for a while, and then to drop
suddenly and be drawn out in a series of faint thudded echoes.

Doctor Unonius went to the window, drew the curtains, unbarred a
shutter, and stared out into the night. A newly risen moon hung low
in the south-east, just above the coping of the courtlage wall, but
the wall with its shrubs and clumps of ivy, massed in blackest
shadow, excluded all view of the terrestrial world. The sound,
whatev