ice arrived. Smith simply could not
grasp such an attitude of mind. He regarded Windles not as a private
house but as a social club, and was utterly unable to see any difference
between the human beings he knew and the strangers who dropped in for a
late chat after the place was locked up. He had no intention of biting
Sam. The idea never entered his head. At the present moment what he felt
about Sam was that he was one of the best fellows he had ever met and
that he loved him like a brother.

Sam, in his unnerved state, could not bring himself to share these
amiable sentiments. He was thinking bitterly that Webster might have had
the intelligence to warn him of bulldogs on the premises. It was just
the sort of woollen-headed thing fellows did, forgetting facts like
that. He scrambled stiffly to his feet and tried to pierce the darkness
that hemmed him in. He ignored Smith, who snuffled sportively about his
ankles, and made for the slightly less black oblong which he took to be
the door leading into the hall. He moved warily, but not warily enough
to prevent his cannoning into and almost upsetting a small table with a
vase on it. The table rocked and the vase jumped, and the first bit of
luck that had come to Sam that night was when he reached out at a
venture and caught it just as it was about to bound on to the carpet.

He stood there, shaking. The narrowness of the escape turned him cold.
If he had been an instant later, there would have been a crash loud
enough to wake a dozen sleeping houses. This sort of thing could not go
on. He must have light. It might be a risk; there might be a chance of
somebody upstairs seeing it and coming down to investigate; but it was a
risk that must be taken. He declined to go on stumbling about in this
darkness any longer. He groped his way with infinite care to the door,
on the wall adjoining which, he presumed, the electric-light switch
would be. It was nearly ten years since he had last been inside Windles,
and it never occurred to him that in this progressive age even a woman
like his Aunt Adeline, of whom he could believe almost anything, would
still be using candles and oil-lamps as a means of illumination. His
only doubt was whether the switch was where it was in most houses, near
the door.

It is odd to reflect that, as his searching fingers touched the knob, a
delicious feeling of relief came to Samuel Marlowe. This misguided young
man actually felt at that moment that his