d along the stair-rail.

His was not an open nature at the best. I almost forgot the importance
of his errand in watching the man himself. Had he not been a
servant--but he was, and an old and foolishly fussy one. I would not
imagine follies, only I wished I could follow him into Mrs. Packard's
presence.

His stay, however, was too short for much to have been gained thereby.
Almost immediately he reappeared, shaking his head and looking very
much disturbed, and I was watching his pottering descent when he was
startled, and I was startled, by two cries which rang out simultaneously
from above, one of pain and distress from the room he had just left,
and one expressive of the utmost glee from the lips of the baby whom the
nursemaid was bringing down from the upper hall.

Appalled by the anguish expressed in the mother's cry, I was bounding
up-stairs when my course was stopped by one of the most poignant sights
it has ever been my lot to witness. Mrs. Packard had heard her child's
laugh, and flying from her room had met the little one on the threshold
of her door and now, crying and sobbing, was kneeling with the child
in her arms in the open space at the top of the stairs. Her paroxysm of
grief, wild and unconstrained as it was, gave less hint of madness than
of intolerable suffering.

Wondering at an abandonment which bespoke a grief too great for all
further concealment, I glanced again at Nixon. He had paused in the
middle of the staircase and was looking back in a dubious way denoting
hesitation. But as the full force of the tragic scene above made itself
felt in his slow mind, he showed a disposition to escape and tremblingly
continued his descent. He was nearly upon me when he caught my eye.
A glare awoke in his, and seeing his right arm rise threateningly, I
thought he would certainly strike me. But he slid by without doing so.

What did it mean? Oh, what did it all mean?

CHAPTER XX. EXPLANATION

Determined to know the cause of Mrs. Packard's anguish, if not of
Nixon's unprovoked anger against myself, I caught him back as he was
passing me and peremptorily demanded:

"What message did you carry to Mrs. Packard to throw her into such a
state as this? Answer! I am in this house to protect her against all
such disturbances. What did you tell her?"

"Nothing."

Sullenness itself in the tone.

"Nothing? and you were sent on an errand? Didn't you fulfil it?"

"Yes."

"And didn't tell her what yo