It was unsettling--Miss
Marty's word again--infernally unsettling. He had begun to lose
confidence in himself.

The room was hot. He stepped to the window, flung it open, and drank
in the cool air of the summer night. Below him lay the garden,
wherein Mr. Basket's statuary showed here and there a glimmer in the
velvet darkness. The Major turned back to the room and began to
undress slowly; removing his wig, his coat, his waistcoat, and laying
them on a chair. Next he turned out his breeches pockets and tossed
his purse, with a handful of loose silver, upon the bed. With it
there jingled the spare latchkey with which Mrs. Basket had entrusted
him.

He picked it up. . . . Yes, why should he not take a turn in the
garden to compose his mind? In his present agitation he was not
likely to woo slumber with success. . . . He slipped on his coat
again and descended the stairs, latchkey in hand. A lamp burned in
the hall, and by the light of it he read the hour on the dial of a
grandfather's clock that stood sentry beside the dining-room door--
five-and-twenty minutes past ten. The Baskets would not be returning
for another hour at least. He unlatched the front door, stepped out,
and closed it softly behind him.

Now mark how simply--how, with a short laugh--by the crook of a
little finger, as it were--the envious gods topple down the tallest
human pride.

The Major descended the front steps, halted for a moment to peer at a
statuette of Hercules resting on his club, and passed on down the
central path of the garden with a smile for his worthy friend's
foible. A dozen paces, and his toe encountered the rim of Mr.
Basket's fish-pond. . . .

The Major went into Mr. Basket's fish-pond souse!--on all fours,
precipitately, with hands wildly clawing the water amid the
astonished goldfish.

The echo of the splash had hardly lost itself in the dark
garden-alleys before he scrambled up, coughing and sputtering, and
struggling to shore rubbed the water from his eyes. Now the basin
had not been cleaned out for some months, and beneath the water,
which did not exceed a foot and a half in depth, there lay a good two
inches of slime and weed, some portion of which his knuckles were
effectively transferring to his face. He had lost a shoe.
Worse than this, as he stood up, shook the water out of his breeches
and turned to escape back to the house, it dawned on him that he had
lost the latchkey!

He had been carrying it