thought it was my duty to tell you, sir."

"Quite right," said he.

"For I felt sure it couldn't just be a gentleman coming to see you, sir,
or he wouldn't have gone into the trees."

"Of course not," he agreed briefly. "Nobody came to see me."

Mary looked at him doubtfully and hesitated for a moment.

"Didn't you even hear anything, sir?" she asked in a lowered voice.

Her master's quick glance made her jump.

"Why?" he demanded.

"Because, sir, I found footsteps in the gravel this morning--where it's
soft with the rain, sir, just under the library window."

Mr. Rattar looked first hard at her and then at his plate. For several
seconds he answered nothing, and then he said:

"I did hear some one."

There was something both in his voice and in his eye as he said this
that was not quite like the usual Simon Rattar. Mary began to feel a
sympathetic thrill.

"Did you look out of the window, sir?" she asked in a hushed voice.

Her master nodded and pursed his lips.

"But you didn't see him, sir?"

"No," said he.

"Who could it have been, sir?"

"I have been wondering," he said, and then he threw a sudden glance at
her that made her hurry for the door. It was not that it was an angry
look, but that it was what she called so "queer-like."

Just as she went out she noted another queer-like circumstance. Mr.
Rattar had stretched out his hand towards the toast rack while he spoke.
The toast stuck between the bars, and she caught a glimpse of an angry
twitch that upset the rack with a clatter. Never before had she seen the
master do a thing of that kind.

A little later the library bell called her. Mr. Rattar had finished
breakfast and was seated beside the fire with a bundle of legal papers
on a small table beside him, just as he always sat, absorbed in work,
before he started for his office. The master's library impressed Mary
vastly. The furniture was so substantial, new-looking, and conspicuous
for the shininess of the wood and the brightness of the red morocco
seats to the chairs. And it was such a tidy room--no litter of papers or
books, nothing ever out of place, no sign even of pipe, tobacco jar,
cigarette or cigar. The only concession to the vices were the ornate ash
tray and the massive globular glass match box on the square table in the
middle of the room, and they were manifestly placed there for the
benefit of visitors merely. Even they, Mary thought, were admirable as
ornaments, and she was