e been after
one when I left him. I saw the light go out behind the cheap stained
glass in the front door, and I heard Uvo going upstairs as I departed.
The next and only other light I passed, in the houses on that side of
the road, was at the top of the one which was now the Vicarage. Thence
also came an only sound; it was the continuous crackle of a typewriter,
through the open window of the room which I knew Miss Julia had
appropriated as her own.

That end of the Estate had by this time a full team of tenants, whereas
I had two sets of painters and paperhangers to keep up to the mark in
Witching Hill Road. This rather came between me and my friends in
Mulcaster Park, especially as my Mr. Muskett lived in their road, and
his house had eyes and a tongue. So it happened that I saw no more of
Miss Julia Brabazon until she paid me a queer little visit at my office
one afternoon about five o'clock. She was out of breath, and her
flurried manner quickened my ear to the sound of her brother's bells
ringing in the distance for week-day evensong.

"I thought I'd like to have one word with you, Mr. Gillon, about my
story," she panted, with a guilty shrinking from the sheet of glass
behind her. "It will be finished in a few days now, I'm thankful to say.
I've been so hard at work upon it, you can't think!"

"Oh, yes, I can," said I; for there seemed to be many more lines on the
simple, eager countenance; the drollery had gone out of it, and its
heightened colouring had an unhealthy, bluish tinge.

"I'm afraid I have been burning the midnight oil a little," she admitted
with a sort of coy bravado. "But there seems so much to do during the
day, and everything is so quiet at night, unless it's that wretched
typewriter of mine! But I muffle the bell, and luckily my brother and
sister are sound sleepers."

"You must be keen, Miss Brabazon, to turn night into day."

"Keen? I never enjoyed writing half so much. It's no effort; the story
simply writes itself. I don't feel as if it were a story at all, but
something that I see and hear and have just got to get down as fast as
ever I can! I feel as if I really knew that old monster we were talking
about the other day. Sometimes he quite frightens me. And that's why
I've come to you, Mr. Gillon. I almost fear I'm making him too great a
horror after all!"

It was impossible not to smile. "That would be a difficult matter, from
all I hear, Miss Brabazon."

"I meant from the point