ng girl like my wife has a positive talent for wickedness and
suspicion, go out to the shelter-house this morning."

"So it was you!" I gasped, putting the newspaper over the tights.

"Why in the name of peace did you jump out the window, and what did you
want with--with these things?"

He twisted around in his chair to stare at me, and then stooped and
clutched frantically at his leg, as if for inspiration.

"Want with those things!" he snarled. "I suppose you can't understand
that a man might wake up in the middle of the night with a mad craving
for a pair of black woolen tights, and--"

"You needn't be sarcastic with me," I broke in. "You can save that for
your wife. I suppose you also had a wild longing for the love-letters of
an insurance agent--"

And then it dawned on me, and I sat down and laughed until I cried.

"And you thought you were stealing your own letters!" I cried. "The ones
she carries fire insurance on! Oh, Mr. Dick, Mr. Dick!"

"How was I to know it wasn't Ju--Miss Summers' room?" he demanded
angrily. "Didn't I follow the dratted dog? And wouldn't you have thought
the wretched beast would have known me instead of sitting on its tail
under the bed and yelling for mother? I gave her the dog myself. Oh, I
tell you, Minnie, if I ever get away from this place--"

"You've got to get away this minute," I broke in, remembering. "They'll
be coming any instant now."

He got up and looked around him helplessly.

"Where'll I go?" he asked. "I can't go back to the shelter-house."

I looked at him and he tried to grin.

"Fact," he said, "hard to believe, but--fact, Minnie. She's got the door
locked. Didn't I tell you she is of a suspicious nature? She was asleep
when I left, and mostly she sleeps all night. And just because she wakes
when I'm out, and lets me come in thinking she's asleep, when she
has one eye open all the time, and she sees what I'd never even seen
myself--that the string of that damned garment, whatever it is, is
fastened to the hook of my shoe, me thinking all the time that the
weight was because I'd broken my leg jumping--doesn't she suddenly
sit up and ask me where I've been? And I--I'm unsuspicious, Minnie, by
nature, and I said I'd been asleep. Then she jumped up and showed me
that--that thing--those things, hanging to my shoe, and she hasn't
spoken to me since. I wish I was dead."

And just then a dog barked outside and somebody on the step stamped the
snow off his feet. W