of the silk loose, and now I ruthlessly finished the destruction
of my gown by jerking it free and tying it around my head.

From far below the smallest sounds came up with peculiar distinctness.
I could hear the paper boy whistling down the drive, and I heard
something else. I heard the thud of a stone, and a spit, followed by a
long and startled meiou from Beulah. I forgot my fear of a height, and
advanced boldly almost to the edge of the roof.

It was half-past six by that time, and growing dusk.

"You boy, down there!" I called.

The paper boy turned and looked around. Then, seeing nobody, he raised
his eyes. It was a moment before he located me: when he did, he stood
for one moment as if paralyzed, then he gave a horrible yell, and
dropping his papers, bolted across the lawn to the road without
stopping to look around. Once he fell, and his impetus was so great
that he turned an involuntary somersault. He was up and off again
without any perceptible pause, and he leaped the hedge--which I am sure
under ordinary stress would have been a feat for a man.

I am glad in this way to settle the Gray Lady story, which is still a
choice morsel in Casanova. I believe the moral deduced by the village
was that it is always unlucky to throw a stone at a black cat.

With Johnny Sweeny a cloud of dust down the road, and the dinner-hour
approaching, I hurried on with my investigations. Luckily, the roof
was flat, and I was able to go over every inch of it. But the result
was disappointing; no trap-door revealed itself, no glass window;
nothing but a couple of pipes two inches across, and standing perhaps
eighteen inches high and three feet apart, with a cap to prevent rain
from entering and raised to permit the passage of air. I picked up a
pebble from the roof and dropped it down, listening with my ear at one
of the pipes. I could hear it strike on something with a sharp,
metallic sound, but it was impossible for me to tell how far it had
gone.

I gave up finally and went down the ladder again, getting in through
the ball-room window without being observed. I went back at once to
the trunk-room, and, sitting down on a box, I gave my mind, as
consistently as I could, to the problem before me. If the pipes in the
roof were ventilators to the secret room, and there was no trap-door
above, the entrance was probably in one of the two rooms between which
it lay--unless, indeed, the room had been built, and the opening