ound that the owner of the
pretty hands had become suddenly, affrightedly, aware that someone was
there, outside the window, staring down, and so of course seeing the task
on which the two pretty little hands were engaged.

Now, the owner of that pair of now shaking little hands had felt quite
sure that no one could possibly see what they were engaged in doing--for
the window on the ledge of which the medicine bottles were standing
looked out on what was practically a blank wall. But the man whose long,
surprised whistle had so suddenly scared her, happened at that moment to
be sitting astride the top of the blank wall, engaged in the legitimate
occupation of sticking bits of broken bottles into putty. The man was
Piper, and doubtless the trifling incident had long since slipped his
mind, for that same afternoon his master, Colonel Crofton, had committed
suicide in a fit of depression owing to shell shock.

Enid Crofton opened her eyes wide, and the sort of vision, or
nightmare--call it what you will--faded at once.

It was a nightmare she had constantly experienced during the first few
nights which had succeeded her husband's death. But since the inquest she
had no longer been haunted by that scene--the double scene of the hands,
the pretty little hands, engaged in that simple, almost mechanical,
action of pouring the contents of one bottle into another, and the vision
of the man on the wall looking down, slantwise, through the window, and
uttering that queer, long-drawn-out whistle of utter surprise.

When at last Mrs. Crofton had had to explain regretfully to clever,
capable Piper that she could no longer afford to keep him on, they had
parted the best of friends. She had made him the handsome present of
twenty-five pounds, for he had been a most excellent servant to her late
husband. And she had done more than that. She had gone to a good deal of
trouble to procure him an exceptionally good situation. Piper had just
gone there, and she hoped, rather anxiously, that he would do well in it.

The man had one serious fault--now and again he would go off and have a
good "drunk." Sometimes he wouldn't do this foolish, stupid thing for
months, and then, perchance, he would do it two weeks running! Colonel
Crofton, so hard in many ways, had been indulgent to this one fault, or
vice, in an otherwise almost perfect servant. When giving Piper a very
high character Mrs. Crofton had just hinted that there had been a time
whe