"And it was he who begged me to bring her, Gilly, when he was at his worst! He said it was his one hope--that she could pull him through--that he knew she could! So I found her, and she did. She wasn't really a nurse, but she was his mother; she was his Angel of Life."

"Will she be forgiven?" I asked, when we had looked askance at the study windows, that gave us back only the wavering reflection of shrubs and of the chimneys opposite.

"Will she forgive?" returned Uvo sardonically. "It's always harder for the one who's in the wrong, and there's always something to be said for him or her!"

"Does she know that her husband needs to be saved as well?"

"Hush!" said Delavoye. The door had opened. Coplestone came out upon the step, and stood there feeling in his pockets.

I held my breath; and the only creature who counted just then, in all that road of bleak red houses, and in all the wintry world beyond, was the great shaken fellow coming down the path.

"You might give this to the cabby," said he, filling my palm with loose silver. "Just tell him we shan't want him now!"

CHAPTER VI - Under Arms

It must have been in my second year of humble office that the burglary scare took possession of Witching Hill. It was certainly the burglars' month of November, and the fogs confirmed its worst traditions. On a night when the street lamps burst upon one at the last moment, like the flash of cannon through their own smoke, a house in Witching Hill Road was scientifically entered, and the silver abstracted in a style worthy of precious stones. In that instance the thieves got clear away with their modest spoil. It was as though they then made a deliberate sporting selection of the ugliest customer on the Estate. Their choice fell upon a Colonel Arthur Cheffins, who not only kept fire-arms but knew how to use them, and gave such an account of himself that it was a miracle how the rascals escaped with their lives.

The first I heard of this affair was a volley of gravel on my window at dead of night. Then came Uvo Delavoye's voice through the fog before I quite knew what I was doing at the open window. Colonel Cheffins lived in the house opposite the Delavoyes', where he had lately started a cramming establishment on a small scale; and on his rushing over the road to the rescue, at the first sound of the fusillade, poor Uvo had himself been under fire in the fog. The good colonel 

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