men, right up to the scene of operations. "That's the
dressing-room," he said to his assistant, "and, as soon as the maid
takes the candle away and goes down to supper, we'll call in. My! how
nice the house do look, to be sure, against the starlight, and with all
its windows and lights! Swop me, Jim, I almost wish I _was_ a
painter-chap. Have you fixed that there wire across the path from the
laundry?"

He cautiously approached the house until he stood below the
dressing-room window, and began to put together his folding ladder. He
was too experienced a practitioner to feel any unusual excitement. Jim
was reconnoitring the smoking-room. Suddenly, close beside Mr. Watkins
in the bushes, there was a violent crash and a stifled curse. Some one
had tumbled over the wire which his assistant had just arranged. He
heard feet running on the gravel pathway beyond. Mr. Watkins, like all
true artists, was a singularly shy man, and he incontinently dropped his
folding ladder and began running circumspectly through the shrubbery. He
was indistinctly aware of two people hot upon his heels, and he fancied
that he distinguished the outline of his assistant in front of him. In
another moment he had vaulted the low stone wall bounding the shrubbery,
and was in the open park. Two thuds on the turf followed his own leap.

It was a close chase in the darkness through the trees. Mr. Watkins was
a loosely built man and in good training, and he gained hand over hand
upon the hoarsely panting figure in front. Neither spoke, but, as Mr.
Watkins pulled up alongside, a qualm of awful doubt came over him. The
other man turned his head at the same moment and gave an exclamation of
surprise. "It's not Jim," thought Mr. Watkins, and simultaneously the
stranger flung himself, as it were, at Watkins's knees, and they were
forthwith grappling on the ground together. "Lend a hand, Bill," cried
the stranger, as the third man came up. And Bill did--two hands, in
fact, and some accentuated feet. The fourth man, presumably Jim, had
apparently turned aside and made off in a different direction. At any
rate, he did not join the trio.

Mr. Watkins's memory of the incidents of the next two minutes is
extremely vague. He has a dim recollection of having his thumb in the
corner of the mouth of the first man, and feeling anxious about its
safety, and for some seconds at least he held the head of the gentleman
answering to the name of Bill to the ground by the hai