y the younger man's face wore so
sad an expression in repose.

"Of course that Indian affair was rather a facer, but the story's some
years old by now and one would think he'd have got over it. As decent a
fellow as I've ever met. But he seems altogether too old for his age,
and even when he smiles or jokes with the child he doesn't look happy. I
wonder if Chloe knows any reason for his melancholy air?"

And with the question still uppermost in his mind he went back to the
drawing-room in search of his wife and child.

CHAPTER VII

It was very dark in the window-recess, shut off from the room by the
heavy blue curtains which fell to the floor in thick folds. The room
itself was not in complete darkness, for the fire, built up by Chloe
with assumed extravagance before she went to bed, had burned down to a
steady red glow, now and then illumined by a dancing gleam of light as a
tiny flame of gas sputtered from some specially charged coal; and as
Anstice peeped cautiously through a carefully arranged chink in the
curtains he could see the pretty room with fair distinctness. The chairs
were standing about with the peculiarly uncanny effect known to all who
enter a room after it has been finally deserted for the night--an effect
as of waiting for some ghostly visitors to fill their pathetic emptiness
and hold high revel or stately converse in the place lately peopled by
mere human beings.

On a little table by the fire stood a chess-board, the old carved red
and white pieces standing on it in jumbled disarray; for Chloe and her
husband, both inveterate chess-lovers, had begun a game which they were
unable, through lack of time, to finish; and as his eyes fell on the
board Anstice had a queer fancy that if he and Major Carstairs
were not present two ghostly chess-players would issue softly from
the shadows and rearrange the pieces for another and perhaps more
strenuously-contested duel.

As the fantastic thought crossed his mind Anstice sat up decisively,
telling himself he was growing imaginative; and Major Carstairs turned
to him with a whispered word.

"Getting fidgety, eh? I know the feeling--used to get it when I was
sitting in a straw hut in the marshes waiting for the duck to
appear----"

He broke off suddenly; for a sound had shattered the silence; but though
he and Anstice pulled themselves together in readiness for anything
which might happen, both realized at the same moment that it was only
the