d, stooping, dogged. The Morin family--man, wife and
daughter--were huddling close together. They, too, were all looking at
him, not with the wrath and contempt to which Madge had risen, but with
cunning desire for revenge, mingled with the cringing of fear. There was
a minute's hush, too strong for expression, in which each experienced
more intensely the shock of the mysterious alarm.

It was Madge who broke the silence. Her voice rang clear, although
vibrating.

'Jacques Morin, he came into our room to rob!' She pointed at
Courthope.

The thin voice of Eliz came in piercing parenthesis: 'I saw him in the
closet, and when I screamed he ran.'

Madge began again. 'Jacques Morin, what part of the house is open? I
feel the wind.' All the time Madge kept her eyes upon Courthope, as upon
some wild animal whose spring she hoped to keep at bay.

That she should appeal to this dull, dogged French servant for
protection against him, who only desired to risk his life to serve her,
was knowledge of such intense vexation that Courthope could still find
no word, and her fixed look of wrath did actually keep him at bay. It
took from him, by some sheer physical power which he did not understand,
the courage with which he would have faced a hundred Morins.

When Jacques Morin began to speak, his wife and daughter took courage
and spoke also; a babel of French words, angry, terrified, arose from
the group, whose grey night-clothes, shaken by their gesticulations,
gave them a half-frenzied appearance.

In the midst of their talking Courthope spoke to Madge at last. 'I ran
up to protect you when I heard screams; I did not wake till you
screamed. Some one has entered the house. He has entered by the window
in my room; I found it open.'

With his own words the situation became clear to him. He saw that he
must hunt for the house-breaker. He began to descend the stairs.

The Morin girl screamed and ran. Morin, producing a gun from behind his
back, pointed it at Courthope, and madam, holding the lamp, squared up
behind her husband with the courage of desperation.

It was not this fantastic couple that checked Courthope's downward rush,
but Madge's voice.

'Keep still!' she cried, in short strong accents of command.

Eliz, becoming aware of his movement, shrieked again.

Courthope, now defiant and angry, turned towards Madge, but, even as he
waited to hear what she had to say, reflected that her interest could
not suffer much b