been
quite comfortable, so far as his physical self was concerned, had he been
willing to open the door-like window that led to the small balcony and
admit the air; but this he feared to do.

Some sense of danger, a feeling of some dreadful peril impending, harassed
him. He tried to reason it all out of his mind. He had not felt so
before having actually in his possession the moldy, discolored leather
suit-case, he reflected. Why should it make a difference?

There was no good cause for its doing so, he told himself, and resolved
to think of other things. But always his thoughts came back to the one
point--some great peril close before him. What was it? He could not fathom
the distress of his own mind.

Often as Grandall tried wearily to forget, to turn and sleep, some
lines of a tale he had somewhere heard or read,--a pirate's song you'll
recognize as being in a book of Stevenson's--struck into his mind. It was
as if someone sang or called aloud to him:--

"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest!
Yo-ho-ho! And a bottle of rum!"

In vain he told himself that it was nothing--nothing! That he must not
let himself fall a prey to such silly dread, an unidentified fear, like a
child afraid in the dark. But ever the sense of peril oppressed him. Ever
there came to his haunted thoughts--

"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest!
Yo-ho-ho! And a bottle of rum!"

At last he rose and sat a long time on the edge of the bed. Then he
dressed himself. For a great while, as the night crept slowly on, he
sat thus fully clothed. He did not know why he did this. The fear of some
unknown, threatening thing was not removed or altered. The ringing in his
brain--

"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest!" was just as it had been before.

He lighted a match and looked at his watch. Four o'clock. Soon it would be
daylight. Then he would go--leave this terrible place forever! Leave
everything he hated--and that was all persons and all things. Leave the
guilt he vowed he would never face--if he could. So thinking, he lay
down once more and sheer exhaustion let the wretched man sink into heavy
slumber.

Lynx-eyed, the scowling Murky waited. The black shadows of the thick
shrubbery near the clubhouse door concealed him. A long, long time passed.
It was quite evident, the tramp reflected, that the man with the suit-case
had gone to bed.

Should he break in on him? Break in the house, slip up to his bed, strike
one swift blow a