nd
watch the next house as long as I like."

There was something ominous about the old bookworm's act as he went
softly back into his half-dark, dusty room, evidently thinking deeply,
till he stopped short in the middle to stand gazing down at the floor.

"Yes, he said he was ill; he looked ill when he came up to the door--
half mad. He will come back again, perhaps to-morrow--perhaps
to-morrow. Hah! it was very near."

He raised his head now, went to the drawer from which he had taken the
key, and placed back in it the heavy life-preserver, and then taking
from the tail of the coat one of the short, old-fashioned pocket pistols
which were loaded by unscrewing the little barrel by means of a key.
This he examined, taking off the cap, after raising the hammer and
putting a fresh one in its place. After this he closed the drawer and
sat down to think.

"Yes," he said, half aloud, "it was very near. The next time he comes
perhaps he'll stay. He is getting to be a nuisance, and a dangerous
one, as well."

CHAPTER TWENTY.

STRANGELY MYSTERIOUS PROCEEDINGS.

The Clareboroughs' carriage was at the door, and the well-matched,
handsome pair of horses were impatiently pawing the ground, in spite of
sundry admonitions from the plump coachman of the faultless turn-out to
be "steady there!" "hold still!" and the like.

Mr Roach, the butler, had appeared for a minute on the step, looking
very pompous and important, exchanged nods with the coachman, and gone
in again to wait for the descent of their people, bound for one of Lord
Gale's dinner-parties in Grosvenor Place.

All was still in the hall as the door was closed, and the marble statues
and bodiless busts did not move upon their pedestals, nor their blank
faces display the slightest wonder at the proceedings which followed,
even though they were enough to startle them out of their equanimity.

For all at once the pompous, stolid butler and the stiff,
military-looking footman, in his good, refined livery, suddenly seemed
to have been stricken with a kind of delirious attack. The expression
upon their faces changed from its customary social diplomatic calm to
one of wild delight, and they both broke into a spasmodic dance, a
combination of the wildest step of the _can-can_ and the mad angulations
of a nigger breakdown, with the accompaniment of snapping of fingers at
each other and the final kick-up and flop of the right foot upon the
floor.

Then they rus