edly; he stood
looking about the room questioningly, then he started toward the front
room.

He cast the light of his torch ahead of him; but Alan had time to
anticipate his action and to retreat to the hall. He held the hangings
a little way from the door jamb so he could see into the room. If this
man were the same who had looted the desk up-stairs, it was plain that
he had not procured there what he wanted or all of what he wanted; and
now he did not know where next to look.

He had, as yet, neither seen nor heard anything to alarm him, and as he
went to the desk in the front room and peered impatiently into the
drawers, he slammed them shut, one after another. He straightened and
stared about. "Damn Ben! Damn Ben!" he ejaculated violently and
returned to the rear room. Alan, again following him, found him on his
knees in front of one of the drawers under the bookcases. As he
continued searching through the drawers, his irritation became greater
and greater. He jerked one drawer entirely out of its case, and the
contents flew in every direction; swearing at it, and damning "Ben"
again, he gathered up the letters. One suddenly caught his attention;
he began reading it closely, then snapped it back into the drawer,
crammed the rest on top of it, and went on to the next of the files.
He searched in this manner through half a dozen drawers, plainly
finding nothing at all he wanted; he dragged some of the books from
their cases, felt behind them and shoved back some of the books but
dropped others on the floor and blasphemy burst from him.

He cursed "Ben" again and again, and himself, and God; he damned men by
name, but so violently and incoherently that Alan could not make out
the names; terribly he swore at men living and men "rotting in Hell."
The beam of light from the torch in his hand swayed aside and back and
forth. Without warning, suddenly it caught Alan as he stood in the
dark of the front room; and as the dim white circle of light gleamed
into Alan's face, the man looked that way and saw him.

The effect of this upon the man was so strange and so bewildering to
Alan that Alan could only stare at him. The big man seemed to shrink
into himself and to shrink back and away from Alan. He roared out
something in a bellow thick with fear and horror; he seemed to choke
with terror. There was nothing in his look akin to mere surprise or
alarm at realizing that another was there and had been seeing and