tion on my plots and
situations in the daytime. It is only when the wife has retired, and the
children, the darlings! are put to bed, that I can sit down quietly and
develop my deeds of darkness.

[Illustration: "I BURN THE MIDNIGHT OIL."]

Nothing out of the usual course had happened on the memorable evening of
which I am about to tell, and which was destined to have so marked an
influence on my literary career. I had had tea with my beloved Seraphina
and our six children at seven o'clock, and afterwards we all sat round
the fire, and I told stories--stories not of crime and cruelty, but of
good fairies and enchanted princesses, of boys and girls at school, and
innocent loves and faithful lovers, which always started with "once upon
a time," and ended with "happy ever after."

During the evening my little flock gradually melted away till nothing
was left of it but my dear wife and our eldest girl, aged fourteen. At
ten o'clock we supped off cold roast pork and rice pudding, with a
little mild ale as a beverage, and then my beloved ones kissed me,
wished me good night, and left me to my labours.

By half-past ten I was hard at work in my study, deep in the most
critical chapter of my new story, "The Chemist's Revenge." I rather
prided myself on the originality of the crime committed in this
thrilling tale. The wicked hero had invented a hideous pill, compounded
of ingredients which would explode within a human body and blow it to
atoms. And now I was approaching the terrible scene in which the fatal
dose was about to be administered to the hapless victim.

It was a quiet night; there was not a breath of wind even to stir the
trees out of doors, and all was still within, save when a coal fell from
the fireplace into the grate and the clock on my mantelpiece chimed the
hour. Midnight had just struck, when my ears were suddenly startled and
my heart set beating by a sound out of doors. It was that of a slow,
heavy step, crunching the gravel of the garden path and coming nearer
and nearer to my door. And then the footsteps ceased, and there was a
knock--a single knock.

If I had made the flesh of my readers to creep in my time, now it was
the turn of my own. No one had ever visited me before by night in this
way. I could not imagine who it could be or what he--for it was the
tread of a man that I had heard--could want.

I turned cold and shivered. But a moment's thought told me that after
all it might be only a poli