ulia?" I whispered. "Have they had lunch?"

"Is it lunch?" replied Julia, through bread and butter; "there isn't a
bit in the house but they have it ate! And the eggs I had for the
fast-day for myself, didn't That One"--I knew this to indicate Miss
McEvoy--"ax an omelette from me when she seen she had no more to get!"

"Are they out of the dining-room?" broke in Robert.

"Faith, they are. 'Twas no good for them to stay in it! That One's lying
up on the sofa in the dhrawing-room like any owld dog, and the Dane and
Mrs. Doherty's dhrinking hot water--they have bad shtomachs, the
craytures."

Robert opened the kitchen door and crept towards the dining-room,
wherein, not long before the alarm, had been gathered all the
essentials of the expedition. I followed him. I have never committed a
burglary, but since the moment when I creaked past the drawing-room
door, foretasting the instant when it would open, my sympathies are
dedicated to burglars.

In two palpitating journeys we removed from the dining-room our
belongings, and placed them in the kitchen; silence, fraught with dire
possibilities, still brooded over the drawing-room. Could they all be
asleep, or was Miss McEvoy watching us through the keyhole? There
remained only my hat, which was upstairs, and at this, the last moment,
Robert remembered his fly-book, left under the clock in the dining-room.
I again passed the drawing-room in safety, and got upstairs, Robert
effecting at the same moment his third entry into the dining-room. I was
in the act of thrusting in the second hat pin when I heard the
drawing-room door open. I admit that, obeying the primary instinct of
self-preservation, my first impulse was to lock myself in; it passed,
aided by the recollection that there was no key. I made for the landing,
and from thence viewed, in a species of trance, Miss McEvoy crossing the
hall and entering the dining-room. A long and deathly pause followed.
She was a small woman; had Robert strangled her? After two or three
horrible minutes a sound reached me, the well-known rattle of the
side-board drawer. All then was well--Miss McEvoy was probably looking
for the biscuits, and Robert must have escaped in time through the
window. I took my courage in both hands and glided downstairs. As I
placed my foot on the oilcloth of the hall, I was confronted by the
nightmare spectacle of my brother creeping towards me on all-fours
through the open door of the dining-room, and then,