chaff.

"Well," said the colonel, "if those are your views I only hope you
haven't many "valuables" in the house."

"On the contrary, colonel, everything we've got over there is a few
sizes too big for its place, and our plate-chest simply wouldn't go
into the strong-room of the local bank. So where do you think we keep
it?"

"I've no idea."

"In the bathroom!" cried Uvo Delavoye, with the shock of laughter which
was the refreshing finish of some of his moodiest fits. But you had to
know him to appreciate his subtle shades, especially to separate the
tangled threads of grim fun and gay earnest, and I feared that the
gallant little veteran was beginning to regard him as a harmless
lunatic. A shake of his bald head was all his comment on the statement
that moved Delavoye himself to sudden mirth. And on the whole I was
thankful when the return of a man-servant with a nervous constable,
grabbed out of the fog by a lucky dip, provided us with an excuse for
groping our way across the road.

"What on earth made you talk all that rot about revolvers?" I grumbled
as we struck his gate.

"It wasn't rot. I meant every word of it."

"The more shame for you, if you did; but you know very well you don't."

"My dear Gilly, I wouldn't live with one of those nasty little weapons
for worlds. I--I couldn't, Gilly--not long!"

He had me quite tightly by the hand.

"I'm coming in with you," I said. "You're not fit to be alone."

"Oh, yes, I am!" he laughed. "I haven't got one of those things yet, and
I shall never get one. I'd rather thieves broke in and stole every ounce
of silver in the place."

So we parted for what was left of the night, instead of turning it into
day as we often did with less excuse; and for once my powers of sleep
deserted me. But it was not the attempted burglary, or any one of its
sensational features, that kept me awake; it was the lamentable
conversation of Uvo Delavoye on the subject of fire-arms, and that no
longer as affecting other minds, but as revealing his own. I had often
heard him indulge his morbid fancies, but never so gratuitously or
before strangers. To me he could and would say anything, but of late he
had been less free with me and I more anxious about him. He had now been
over eighteen months on the shelf. That was his whole trouble. It was
not that he was ever seriously ill, but that he was always well enough
to worry because he was no better or fitter for work. His mind raced
lik