they carried were turned upon the very door of my bedroom which I had but just shut behind me.

Had they been diverted a hair’s-breadth to the right, they would have discovered me, standing with my back to the wall, a helpless and, I do protest, a pitiable figure. But the robbers were too set upon the jewels to delay for any such unlikely chance, and they went straight on to my brother’s room; and entering it, to my surprise, without difficulty, I heard them shut the door and lock it behind them.

So there I stood, my limbs still trembling, but the spell of immediate fear already a little removed from me. Dreading discovery no longer, I crossed the landing silently and entered my maid’s room. A courageous woman, far braver than her mistress—for she is of Irish descent, and does not know what the meaning of fear is—she heard me with as little concern as if I had been ordering her to go shopping into Cambridge.

“The master’s away in the Park,” she said; “then we must fetch him, mistress. I’ll go myself. Do you wait here with me until I am dressed.”

I dreaded being left, and made no scruple to tell her so.

“Why, that’s all right,” she exclaimed, quite cheerily. “I’ll go and call Williams. They’ll be off fast enough, mistress, if they get the diamonds. Now, do you just sit here quietly, and think nothing at all about it. I’ll be there and back like master’s motor-car. Sure, the impudence of them—to come to this house of all places in the world! They’ll be robbing Buckingham Palace next!”

She was dressing the while she spoke, and being ready almost immediately, she put a shawl about her shoulders, and made to set off through the Park. When she had gone I locked the door—coward that I was—and sat all alone in the darkness, praying for my brother’s coming. Indeed, I think that I counted the minutes, and had come to the belief that Humphreys had been gone a quarter of an hour—though I make sure now that it was not truly more than five minutes—when a terrible cry, something so inhuman, so dreadful, as to be beyond all my experience, rang out through the house, and was repeated again and again until the very night seemed to echo it.

What had happened? Had my brother returned, then? Was it his voice I had heard? Not for a hundred thousand pounds could I have remained any longer in that dark room with these dreadful questions for my company—and, unlocking the door, I ran out to the landing, calling “Ean! Ean! for God’s sake tell me 

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