t him
in, as it were, with the mystery he was there to unravel, but which for
some reason, hardly explainable to himself, filled him with such a sense
of foreboding that he had moments in which he thought only of escape. But
his part must be played and he prepared himself to play it well. Having
changed his clothes and warmed himself with a draft of whisky, he sat
down at his table and was busy writing when the maid came in to ask if he
would wait for his supper till the coach came, or have it earlier and
served in his own room.

With an air of petulance, he looked up, rapped on the table, and replied:

"Here! here! I'm too busy to meet strangers. An early supper and an early
bed. That's the way I get through _my_ work."

The girl stared and went softly out. Work!--that? Sitting at a table and
just putting words on paper. If it was beds he had to drag around now, or
a dozen hungry, clamoring men to feed all at once, and all with the best
cuts, or stairs to run up fifty times a day, or--but I need not fill out
her thought. It made her voluble in the kitchen and secured him the
privacy which his incognito demanded.

His supper over, he waited feverishly for the coach, which ordinarily was
due at seven in the evening. To-night it bade fair to be late, owing to
the bad condition of the roads and the early darkness. The wind had gone
down, but it still rained. Not quite so tempestuously as when he roamed
the cemetery, but steadily enough to keep eaves and branches dripping.
The sound of this ceaseless drip was eerie enough to his strained senses,
waiting as he was for an event which might determine the happiness or the
misery of his life. He tried to forget it and wrote diligently, putting
down words whose meaning he did not stop to consider, so that he had
something to show to prying eyes if such should ever glance through his
papers. But the sound had got on his brain, and presently became so
insistent that he rose again and flung his window up to see if he were
deceived in thinking he heard a deep roar mingling with the incessant
patter, a roar which the wind had hitherto prevented him from separating
from the general turmoil, but which now was apparent enough to call for
some explanation.

He had made no mistake; a steady sound of rushing water filled the
outside air. A fall was near, a fall by means of which, no doubt, the
factories were run.

Why had he not thought of this? Why had its sound held a note of menace