roused Josephine, who sat up in bed and asked
hoarsely what the matter was. I put my finger on my lips quite
irrelevantly, for it was pitch dark.

"Fred, are there burglars in the house?" she gasped.

"Sh! Yes."

"What are you doing, Fred? Oh, you mus'n't go down and expose yourself
on any account." She was evidently very much agitated. "Promise me that
you will not."

Having ascertained that the door was secure I walked across the room and
turned on the electric light. Josephine was sitting bolt upright,
quivering with excitement. Her eyes followed my every movement, as,
having slipped on my trousers and a pair of boots, I began to look around
me, tramping sturdily.

"Fred, they'll hear you if you make such a noise," said my wife, in an
agonized whisper.

"I fervently trust so," I retorted. "That's why I'm doing it."

As I spoke my eye lit at last on something adapted to my purpose. I had
been trying to avoid the destruction of a wash basin, and I seized with
grateful eagerness the pair of Indian clubs which offered themselves and,
lifting them to the level of my brow, let them fall clamorously on the
floor. The welkin rang, so to speak, and I sank with nervous exhaustion
into an arm-chair.

The house seemed deathly still and it struck me that Josephine on her
part was ominously quiet. When she spoke at last it was to ask:

"Haven't you a pistol?"

"Yes, dear."

"Are you going to let them take everything?"

"It is for them to decide, darling."

"But, Fred----" Josephine did not finish her sentence. The words she
uttered were, however, so full of poignant surprise and disappointment
that I felt constrained to inquire with a guilty attempt at nonchalance:

"Is there anything you would like to have me do?"

"You are the best judge, of course," she answered, coldly. "Only, do you
think it is the usual way?"

"The usual way?" I echoed. Among the few points in Josephine's character
which irritate me is her weakness for custom, and it is growing on her.
"No, I suppose that the correct social thing would have been to stand at
the head of the banisters in my nightgown with a lighted candle and make
a target of myself."

"Why did you buy a pistol, then?" inquired my better half.

"So that the children needn't shoot themselves with it after it was
locked up and the cartridges carefully hidden," I replied, with levity.
We were both so heated that we had practically forgotten that flat
burglar