deniable, then, that since she had closeted herself up-stairs
another person had entered the house--some one who had shut himself up
there in the library for a purpose apparently as clandestine as her
own. Or why such pains to mask the light, and why such care not to
disturb the silence of the house?

To have gone on and made good an escape without trying to read this
riddle would have been hardly human of the girl, for all her
misgivings; she stole on to the folding doors with less noise than a
mouse had made and put an eye to the crack, which, proving somewhat
wider than she had imagined, afforded a fair view of the best
part of the other room.

An electric chandelier was on full-blaze above the broad and heavy
centre-table of mahogany, beyond which, against the farther wall,
stood on the one hand a bookcase, on the other a desk of the roll-top
type--closed. Above each of these the wall was decorated with trophies
of ancient armour; between them hung a huge canvas in a massive gilt
frame--the portrait of a beautiful woman beautifully painted. And
immediately beneath the portrait stood a young man, posed in profound
abstraction, staring at the desk.

He rested lightly against the table, his back square to Sally's view,
revealing a well-turned head thatched with dark hair, clipped snugly
by well-formed ears, and the salient line of one lean, brown cheek.
But even so, with his countenance hidden, something conveyed a strong
impression to the girl of a perplexed and disconcerted humour.

She was frankly disappointed. For some reason she had thought to
discover a burglar of one or another accepted type--either a dashing
cracksman in full-blown evening dress, lithe, polished, pantherish, or
a common yegg, a red-eyed, unshaven burly brute in the rags and
tatters of a tramp. But this man wore unromantic blue serge upon a
person neither fascinating nor repellent. She could hardly
imagine him either stealing a diamond tiara or hopping a freight.

But that he was of a truly criminal disposition she was not permitted
long to doubt; for in another moment he started from his pensive pose
with the animation of one inspired, strode alertly to the wall,
stepped up on the seat of a chair beside the desk, and straining on
tiptoes (though tolerably tall) contrived to grasp the handle of a
short-bladed Roman sword which formed part of one of the trophies.

With some difficulty and, in the end, a grunt of satisfaction, he
worked the