rooms were on this lower stage,
and opened upon the road; an outer stairway ran up to the centre door at
the back, but at the east and west flanks of the house the stone walls
stood without port or window except those above the eaves,--the dormers.
Light and air in abundance streamed through the broad Venetian windows
north and south when light and air were needed. This night, as usual,
all was tightly closed below, all darkness aloft as he glanced up at the
dormers high above his head. As he did so, his foot struck a sudden and
sturdy obstacle; he stumbled and pitched heavily forward, and found
himself sprawling at full length upon a ladder lying on the ground
almost in the middle of the roadway.

"Damn those painters!" he growled between his set teeth. "They leave
their infernal man-traps around in the very hope of catching me, I
believe. Now, who but a painter would have left a ladder in such a place
as this?"

Rising ruefully and rubbing a bruised knee with his hand, he limped
painfully ahead a few steps, until he came to the side-wall of the
colonel's house. Here a plank walk passed from the roadway along the
western wall until almost on a line with the front piazza, where by a
flight of steps it was carried up to the level of the parade. Here he
paused a moment to dust off his clothes and rearrange his belt and
sword. He stood leaning against the wall and facing the gray stone gable
end of the row of old-fashioned quarters that bounded the parade upon
the southwest. All was still darkness and silence.

"Confound this sword!" he muttered again: "the thing made rattle and
racket enough to wake the dead. Wonder if I disturbed anybody at the
colonel's."

As though in answer to his suggestion, there suddenly appeared, high on
the blank wall before him, the reflection of a faint light. Had a little
night-lamp been turned on in the front room of the upper story? The
gleam came from the north window on the side: he saw plainly the shadow
of the pretty lace curtains, looped loosely back. Then the shade was
gently raised, and there was for an instant the silhouette of a slender
hand and wrist, the shadow of a lace-bordered sleeve. Then the light
receded, as though carried back across the room, waned, as though slowly
extinguished, and the last shadows showed the curtains still looped
back, the rolling shade still raised.

"I thought so," he growled. "One tumble like that is enough to wake the
Seven Sleepers, let alone