beneath the little cloud of smoke, as it rose, he saw that the door
stood open and that the figure had vanished. He ran hastily down to
the door, and, with the pistol raised, stood listening, trying to peer
through the fog.

An unearthly stillness followed the deafening noise of the shots. The
fog poured in at the doorway as he stood there hoping that the noise
had reached the ears of some chance passer-by. He stood so for a few
minutes, and then, closing the door again, resolutely turned back and
went upstairs.

His first proceeding upon entering his room was to carefully look
beneath and behind the heavy, dusty pieces of furniture, and, satisfied
that no foe lurked there, he closed the door and locked it Then he
opened the window gently, and listened The court below was perfectly
still. He closed the window, and, taking off his coat, barricaded the
door with all the heaviest furniture in the room. With a feeling of
perfect security, he complacently regarded his handiwork, and then,
sitting on the edge of the bed, began to undress. He turned the lamp
down a little, and reloading the empty chambers of his revolver, placed
it by the side of the lamp on the drawers. Then, as he turned back the
clothes, he fancied that something moved beneath them. As he paused, it
dropped lightly from the other side of the bed to the floor.

At first he sat, with knitted brows, trying to see what it was. He
had only had a glimpse of it, but he certainly had an idea that it was
alive. A rat perhaps. He got off the bed again with an oath, and, taking
the lamp in his hand, peered cautiously about the floor. Twice he walked
round the room in this fashion. Then he stooped down, and, raising the
dirty bed hangings, peered beneath.

He almost touched the wicked little head of the brown man's devil, and
with a stifled cry, sprang hastily backward. The lamp shattered against
the corner of the drawers, and, falling in a shower of broken glass
and oil about his stockinged feet, left him in darkness. He threw the
fragment of glass stand which remained in his hand from him, and, quick
as thought, gained the bed again, and crouched there, breathing heavily.

He tried to think where he had put the matches, and remembered there
were some on the widow-sill. The room was so dark that he could not see
the foot of the bed, and in his fatuity he had barricaded himself in
the room with the loathsome reptile which was to work the brown man's
vengeance.