ion with his hand till it stuck in its place, and left little
damage apparent to a casual observer.

"See," he said, "it looks nearly all right. A little glue will quite
repair the mischief to-morrow I am sure I wonder how your servant
managed to get it up here at all--it is such a weight and size."

As a matter of fact, Miss Joliffe herself had helped Ann to carry the
picture as far as the Grands Mulets of the last landing. The final
ascent she thought could be accomplished in safety by the girl alone,
while it would have been derogatory to her new position of an
independent lady to appear before Westray carrying the picture herself.

"Do not vex yourself," Westray begged; "look, there is a nail in the
wall here under the ceiling which will do capitally for hanging it till
I can find a better place; the old cord is just the right length." He
climbed on a chair and adjusted the picture, standing back as if to
admire it, till Miss Joliffe's complacency was fairly restored.

Westray was busied that night long after Miss Joliffe had left him, and
the hands of the loud-ticking clock on the mantelpiece showed that
midnight was near before he had finished his work. Then he sat a little
while before the dying fire, thinking much of Mr Sharnall, whom the
picture had recalled to his mind, until the blackening embers warned him
that it was time to go to bed. He was rising from his chair, when he
heard behind him a noise as of something falling, and looking round, saw
that the bottom of the picture-frame, which he had temporarily pushed
into position, had broken away again of its own weight, and was fallen
on the floor. The frame was handsomely wrought with a peculiar
interlacing fillet, as he had noticed many times before. It was curious
that so poor a picture should have obtained a rich setting, and
sometimes he thought that Sophia Flannery must have bought the frame at
a sale, and had afterwards daubed the flower-piece to fill it.

The room had grown suddenly cold with the chill which dogs the heels of
a dying fire on an early winter's night. An icy breath blew in under
the door, and made something flutter that lay on the floor close to the
broken frame. Westray stooped to pick it up, and found that he had in
his hand a piece of folded paper.

He felt a curious reluctance in handling it. Those fantastic scruples
to which he was so often a prey assailed him. He asked himself had he
any right to examine this piece