ear like a muffled murmur.

A door gave from this room on the passage and this he had carefully
locked; but it hung loosely on its hinges and the slightest noise in the
house--a heavy footfall overhead or in the shop--would cause it to
rattle with a weird, intermittent sound which sent sleep flying baffled
away.

There were thoughts too which crowded in upon him--pleasant thoughts as
well as others that were a trifle sad--the immediate future with its
promise of a possible fortune loomed brightly enough, but the means to
that happy end was vaguely disturbing the light-hearted equanimity of
this soldier of fortune accustomed hitherto to grip Chance by the hair
whenever she rushed past him in her mad, whirling career, and without
heeding those who stood in his way.

But suddenly the whole thing seemed different, and Diogenes himself
could not have told you why it was so. Thoughts of the future and of the
promises which it held disturbed when they should have elated him: there
was a feeling in him which he could not analyse, a feeling wherein a
strange, sweet compassion seemed to form the main ingredient. The
philosopher who had hitherto viewed life through the rosy glasses of
unalterable good-humour, who had smiled at luck and ill-luck, laughed at
misfortune and at hope, suddenly felt that there was something in life
which could not be dismissed light-heartedly, something which really
counted, though it was so intangible and so elusive that even now he
could not give it a name.

The adventurer, who had slept soundly and dreamlessly in camp and on the
field, in the streets of a sacked town or the still smouldering
battlements of a fortress, could find no rest in the comfortable bed so
carefully prepared for him in the house of Ben Isaje the Jew. The murmur
of voices from the shop, low and monotonous, irritated his nerves, the
rattling of the door upon its hinges drove him well-nigh distracted.

He heard every noise in the house as they died out one by one; the voice
of the serving woman bidding the jongejuffrouw "good-night," the
shuffling footsteps of the old Jew, the heavy tread of Maria overhead,
and another, light and swift which--strangely enough--disturbed him more
completely than the louder sounds had done.

At last he could stand his present state no longer, he felt an
unpleasant tingling to the very tips of his fingers and the very roots
of his hair; it seemed to him as if soft noiseless steps wandered
aim