ink I am done here. We will go down, if you please, and I will
give you the benefit of my conjectures." He puts the bottle and the
piece of linen in his pocket, and turns from the room. Instinctively he
takes the lead, instinctively they follow, naturally according him the
leadership.

When they are once more seated, he turns to Constance.

"They gave you a very light dose of chloroform, Miss Wardour."

"Very light," she replies; "and that was most fortunate for me."

"How fortunate?"

"Allow me to explain," interrupts Doctor Heath. "Miss Wardour possesses
one of those peculiar constitutions upon which all opiates act with
disastrous effect. It is fortunate that a cautious hand,--I was about to
say a skilled hand,--administered the drug. I could swear that not the
half of an ordinary dose was given her, for a full dose would have
prostrated her for days; and the quantity it would require to make you
or me sleep soundly for half the night, would kill her outright."

"Ah!" says the detective, softly, to himself. "Ah-h-h!"

"Now I wonder;" it is Mrs. Aliston who speaks. "I _wonder_ how in the
world you knew that they had given my niece only a small dose."

"Very easily, madame. The phial is very small, and it is now over
two-thirds full."

"That, indeed!" murmurs Mrs. Aliston, feeling somehow extinguished,
while the others smile at his simple explanation.

"And now," says the detective, "for my deductions. First, then, the
robbers did not enter these grounds last night for the first time. They
did not enter the library at random, or because that window could be
easily forced. They, whoever they were, knew their grounds, not only
from without, but from within. The disturbance in the library is only a
ruse,--the robbers wanted nothing, knew they should find nothing, there.
They were not amateurs; yet, somehow, in this case, they bungled
somewhat in their work. Before they approached this house, every thing
was planned, and all was done as planned. They were systematic,
therefore successful; and yet--they bungled. They came by the
river,--came in a boat, with oars muffled; they came by the footpath
over the river slope, and entered your garden by leaping the fence just
below the gate, which was locked. Then they followed the footpaths
through the shrubbery, and straight to that library window. They came
there because they knew it to be the library window, and they wished to
cross the library because they knew that