cottage was close to Kirby Hall,
and whether this would not be giving a deal of trouble at the other end;
whereupon he mischievously misunderstood me a second time, saying the
cottage and the hall were not even in sight of each other, and I really
had no intrusion to fear, as he was a lonely bachelor like myself,
and would only be up there four or five days at the most. So I made my
appreciation of his society plainer than ever to him; for indeed I
had found a more refreshing pleasure in it already than I had hoped to
derive from mortal man again; and we parted, at three o'clock in the
morning, like old fast friends.

"Only don't expect too much, my dear Mr. Cole," were his last words to
me. "My own place is as ancient and as tumble-down as most ruins that
you pay to see over. And I'm never there myself because--I tell you
frankly--I hate it like poison!"

CHAPTER VIII. A SMALL PRECAUTION

My delight in the society of this young Squire Rattray (as I soon was to
hear him styled) had been such as to make me almost forget the sinister
incident which had brought us together. When I returned to my room,
however, there were the open window and the litter on the floor to
remind me of what had happened earlier in the night. Yet I was less
disconcerted than you might suppose. A common housebreaker can have
few terrors for one who has braved those of mid-ocean single-handed; my
would-be visitor had no longer any for me; for it had not yet occurred
to me to connect him with the voices and the footsteps to which, indeed,
I had been unable to swear before the doctor. On the other hand, these
morbid imaginings (as I was far from unwilling to consider them) had
one and all deserted me in the sane, clean company of the capital young
fellow in the next room.

I have confessed my condition up to the time of this queer meeting.
I have tried to bring young Rattray before you with some hint of his
freshness and his boyish charm; and though the sense of failure is heavy
upon me there, I who knew the man knew also that I must fail to do him
justice. Enough may have been said, however, to impart some faint idea
of what this youth was to me in the bitter and embittering anti-climax
of my life. Conventional figures spring to my pen, but every one of them
is true; he was flowers in spring, he was sunshine after rain, he was
rain following long months of drought. I slept admirably after all;
and I awoke to see the overturned toilet-ta