te you are to be taken care of."

He shuffled away, but came back in a couple of minutes with the
nightshirt.

"Good-night," he called to me, flinging it in at the door; and without
giving me time to return the wish, went his way up-stairs.

Now it might be supposed I was only too glad to toss off my clothes and
climb into the bed I had so unexpectedly acquired a right to. But, as a
matter of fact, I did nothing of the kind. Instead, I drew on my boots
and sat on the bed's edge, blinking at my candle till it died down in
its socket, and afterwards at the purple square of window as it slowly
changed to grey with the coming of dawn. I was cold to the heart, and
my teeth chattered with an ague. Certainly I never suspected my host's
word; but was even occupied in framing good resolutions and shaping out
a reputable future, when I heard the front door gently pulled to, and a
man's footsteps moving quietly to the gate.

The treachery knocked me in a heap for the moment. Then, leaping up and
flinging my door wide, I stumbled through the uncertain light of the
passage into the front hall. There was a fan-shaped light over the
door, and the place was very still and grey. A quick thought, or,
rather, a sudden, prophetic guess at the truth, made me turn to the
figure of the mastiff curled under the hall table.

I laid my hand on the scruff of his neck. He was quite limp, and my
fingers sank into the flesh on either side of the vertebrae.
Digging them deeper, I dragged him out into the middle of the hall and
pulled the front door open to see the better.

His throat was gashed from ear to ear.

How many seconds passed after I dropped the senseless lump on the floor,
and before I made another movement, it would puzzle me to say. Twice I
stirred a foot as if to run out at the door. Then, changing my mind, I
stepped over the mastiff, and ran up the staircase.

The passage at the top was now dark; but groping down it, I found the
study door open, as before, and passed in. A sick light stole through
the blinds--enough for me to distinguish the glasses and decanters on
the table, and find my way to the curtain that hung before the inner
room.

I pushed the curtain aside, paused for a moment, and listened to the
violent beat of my heart; then felt for the door-handle and turned
it.

All I could see at first was that the chamber was small; next, that the
light patch in a line with the window was the white coverlet of