nodding his
head several times.

"Now, by the Old Head of Kinsale, little man," said I, "what do you
mean by that remark and that motion of the head? What's wrong with the
plan?"

"The plan's a good one, as I have said," reiterated the Doctor. But I
saw there was something on his mind, and told him so, urging him to be
out with it.

"Do you think," said I, "that Lady Mary will be in church with her
father and mother?"

"I do not," muttered the Doctor, cautiously bringing his voice down to
a whisper; "but I want to warn you that there's danger here in this
room while you're lurking around my Earl's palace."

"How can danger harm me here when I am somewhere else?" I asked.

A very mysterious manner fell upon the little man, and he glanced, one
after the other, at the four corners of the room, as if he heard a
mouse moving and wanted to detect it. Then he looked sternly at the
door, and I thought he was going to peer up the chimney, but instead
he leaned across the table and said huskily,--

"The papers!"

"What papers?" I asked, astonished.

"Your thoughts are so intent on the young lady that you forget
everything else. Have you no recollection of the papers the Earl of
Westport is so anxious to put himself in possession of?"

I leaned back in my chair and gazed steadily at Chord; but his eyes
would not bring themselves to meet mine, and so he made some pother
about filling up his cup again, with the neck of the bottle trembling
on the edge, as if its teeth were chattering.

Now my father used to say when a man is afraid to meet your eye, be
prepared to have him meet your fist. I disremembered saying anything
to the Doctor about these same papers, which, truth to tell, I had
given but little thought to recently, with other things of more
importance to crowd them out of mind.

"How come you to know anything about the papers?" I said at last.

"Oh, your memory is clean leaving you!" cried the little Doctor, as if
the cup of wine he drank had brought back his courage to him. "You
told me all about the papers when we were in Kensington Gardens."

"If I did," says I, "then I must have further informed you that I gave
them as a present to Lady Mary herself. Surely I told you that?"

"You told me that, of course; but I thought you said they had come
back into your possession again. If I'm wrong, it's no matter at all,
and there's nothing to be said about them. I'm merely speaking to you
by way of a friend, a