s quieter for the moment. He believed that Leh Shin was
being cautiously tracked, and the pointing image had held no further
traces of bloodshed upon his yellow hands. Hartley had grown to loathe
the grinning figure, and to loathe the whole tedious, difficult tragedy
of the lost boy. If it had lain in the native quarter he could have
found interest in the excitement of the chase, but if it ramified into
the Cantonment, Hartley had no mind for it. He was a man first, a
sociable, kindly man, and, later, an officer of the law.

VIII

SHOWS HOW THE CLOAK OF DARKNESS OF ONE NIGHT HIDES MANY EMOTIONS, AND
MRS. WILDER IS FRANKLY INQUISITIVE

Darkness brooded everywhere, but the gloom of night is a darkness that
is impenetrable only to our eyes because we creatures of the hard glare
of daylight cannot see in the strange clearness that brings out the
stars. Only in the houses of men real darkness has its habitation. Under
close roofs, confined within walls, shut into rooms, and lurking in
corners: there, darkness may be found, and because man made it, it has
its own special terror, as have all the creatures of man's hand. Dark,
menacing and noiseless, the shadows flock in as daylight wanes, filing
up like heavy thoughts and sad thoughts, and casting a gloom with their
coming that is not the blackness of earth's restful night.

Mrs. Wilder paced her room with the steps of a woman whose heart drives
sleep out with scorpion-whips of memory; and she went softly, for sound
travels far at night, and Draycott Wilder, in the next room, was a light
sleeper. She was thinking steadily, and she was trying to force her will
across the distance into the stronghold of Hartley's inner
consciousness.

Night brought no more rest to Mrs. Draycott Wilder than it did to Craven
Joicey, the Banker, but Joicey did not sit in the dark. Madness lies in
the dark for some minds, and he had turned on the electric light, that
showed his face yellow and weary. On the wall the lizards, awakened by
the sudden glare, resumed their fly-catching, and scuttled with a dry,
scurrying sound over the walls, breaking the silence with a perpetual
"chuck-chuck" as they chased each other. Joicey looked as though he was
dreaming evil dreams, and nothing of his surroundings was real to him.
The room became another room, the tables and chairs grew indistinct, the
face of a small _Gaudama_ on the mantel-piece became a living face that
menaced him, and the "chuck-c