r the bed. The thud of his head against what appeared to be some
sort of joist or support, unless it had been placed there by the maker
as a practical joke, on the chance of this kind of thing happening some
day, coincided with the creak of the opening door. Then the light
was switched on again, and the bulldog in the corner gave a welcoming
woofle.

"And how is mamma's precious angel?"

Rightly concluding that the remark had not been addressed to himself
and that no social obligation demanded that he reply, Archie pressed
his cheek against the boards and said nothing. The question was not
repeated, but from the other side of the room came the sound of a patted
dog.

"Did he think his muzzer had fallen down dead and was never coming up?"

The beautiful picture which these words conjured up filled Archie with
that yearning for the might-have-been which is always so painful. He was
finding his position physically as well as mentally distressing. It was
cramped under the bed, and the boards were harder than anything he had
ever encountered. Also, it appeared to be the practice of the housemaids
at the Hotel Hermitage to use the space below the beds as a depository
for all the dust which they swept off the carpet, and much of this was
insinuating itself into his nose and mouth. The two things which Archie
would have liked most to do at that moment were first to kill Miss
Silverton--if possible, painfully--and then to spend the remainder of
his life sneezing.

After a prolonged period he heard a drawer open, and noted the fact as
promising. As the old married man, he presumed that it signified the
putting away of hair-pins. About now the dashed woman would be looking
at herself in the glass with her hair down. Then she would brush it.
Then she would twiddle it up into thingummies. Say, ten minutes for
this. And after that she would go to bed and turn out the light, and he
would be able, after giving her a bit of time to go to sleep, to creep
out and leg it. Allowing at a conservative estimate three-quarters of--

"Come out!"

Archie stiffened. For an instant a feeble hope came to him that this
remark, like the others, might be addressed to the dog.

"Come out from under that bed!" said a stern voice. "And mind how you
come! I've got a pistol!"

"Well, I mean to say, you know," said Archie, in a propitiatory voice,
emerging from his lair like a tortoise and smiling as winningly as a man
can who has just bumped his