y
tightening of the fingers. Should I keep still, or make an effort? I
kept still, trying to breathe naturally. The fingers left my throat, and
fumbled under the pillow as if searching for something, then gradually
retreated, the breathing of the man became less distinct, and I was
alone. With one bound I reached the door, bolted it, and sat down on the
floor in a helpless and chaotic condition. The next day a new steward
was missing; so were several other things.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: F. W. Robinson has a predicament.]

Oh, yes, I have had my awkward predicament too--you, gentlemen, have not
had it all your own way. It happened in "the dead of the night" at a big
hotel in a Lancashire watering-place, and my first notice of the
forthcoming event was given to me by a loud hammering at the front door.
"Gentleman home late, decidedly noisy, and probably drunk," I
soliloquised, and was about to resume my slumbers when someone ran along
the corridor outside, his or her naked feet sounding oddly enough as
they pattered, at a great rate, past my door. "Somebody ill," was my
next thought. "Very ill," was thought number three, as more feet--also
in a hurry--went bounding by. "Perhaps a lunatic at large," was my
fourth reflection, as various voices sounded in the distance, several of
them in a high falsetto. I got out of bed, opened my door, and looked
down the corridor towards the big wide staircase in the distance. There
was smoke coming along the passage, a smell of burnt wood, and then a
woman's voice giving out a bloodcurdling shriek of "Fire!" That was
quite enough notice for me. Two minutes afterwards I was downstairs in
the hall of that sensational establishment.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: It necessitates unconventional attire.]

I was not alone. I was in a mixed assembly of a hundred men, women, and
children, who very quickly became two hundred, presently three hundred,
all told; visitors, waiters, chambermaids, hotel officials, huddled
together in the most incongruous and comic costumes, and thirty per
cent. of them with no costumes at all, unless night-shirts and
curl-papers count. I was decorous by comparison. I _had_ on a pair of
trousers (buttoned up the wrong way, certainly), a billycock hat, a
surtout coat, a walking-stick, and no shoes or socks. The hall, being
paved with marble, struck exceedingly cold to bare feet, and with a
total disregard for