sezee. ''Ow can I?' sez I. ''Ere'm I hout of a job these six months, lookin' fer work every dye an' carn't find it.' Sezee,     'Come an' see me this hevenin' at me home, Noine, Frognall Stryte,' 'e sez, an'—"

"That'll do for now. You borrow a pencil and paper and write it down and I'll read it when I've got more time; I never heard the like of it. This 'ouse hasn't been lived in these two years. Move on, and don't let me find you round 'ere again. March, I say!"

There was more of it—more whining explanations artfully tinctured with abuse, more terse commands to depart, the whole concluding with scraping footsteps, diminuendo, and another perfunctory, rattle of the knob as the bobby, having shoo'd the putative evil-doer off, assured himself that no damage had actually been done. Then he, too, departed, satisfied and self-righteous, leaving a badly frightened but very grateful amateur criminal to pursue his self-appointed career of crime.

He had no choice other than to continue; in point of fact, it had been insanity just then to back out, and run the risk of apprehension at the hands of that ubiquitous bobby, who (for all he knew) might be lurking not a dozen yards distant, watchful for just such a sequel. Still, Kirkwood hesitated with the best of excuses. Reassuring as he had found the sentinel's extemporized yarn,—proof positive that the fellow had had no more right to prohibit a trespass than Kirkwood to commit one,—at the same time he found himself pardonably a prey to emotions of the utmost consternation and alarm. If he feared to leave the house he had no warrant whatever to assume that he would be permitted to remain many minutes unharmed within its walls of mystery.

The silence of it discomfited him beyond measure; it was, in a word, uncanny.

Before him, as he lingered at the door, vaguely disclosed by a wan illumination penetrating a dusty and begrimed fan-light, a broad hall stretched indefinitely towards the rear of the building, losing itself in blackness beyond the foot of a flight of stairs. Save for a few articles of furniture,—a hall table, an umbrella-stand, a tall dumb clock flanked by high-backed chairs,—it was empty. Other than Kirkwood's own restrained respiration not a sound throughout the house advertised its inhabitation; not a board creaked beneath the pressure of a foot, not a mouse rustled in the wainscoting or beneath the floors, not a breath of air stirred sighing in 

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