at only a person insensible to all sight and sound could be expected
to remain asleep under such circumstances, and that I would be perfectly
justified in their eyes in opening my door and taking a peep down the
corridor. So without further ado, I drew my bed aside and glanced out.

All was perfectly dark and silent in the great house. The only light
visible came from the candle burning in the room behind me, and as for
sound, it was almost too still--it was the stillness of intent rather
than that of natural repose.

This was so unexpected that for an instant I stood baffled and
wondering. Then my nose went up, and I laughed quietly to myself. I
could see nothing and I could hear nothing; but Amelia Butterworth, like
most of her kind, boasts of more than two senses, and happily there was
something to smell. A quickly blown-out candle leaves a witness behind
it to sensitive nostrils like mine, and this witness assured me that the
darkness was deceptive. Some one had just passed the head of my corridor
with a light, and because the light was extinguished it did not follow
that the person who held it was far away. Indeed, I thought that now I
heard a palpitating breath.

"Humph," I cried aloud, but as if in unconscious communion with myself,
"it is not often I have so vivid a dream! I was sure that I heard steps
in the hall. I fear I'm growing nervous."

Nothing moved. No one answered me.

"Miss Knollys!" I called firmly.

No reply.

"Lucetta, dear!"

I thought this appeal would go unanswered also, but when I raised my
voice for the third time, a sudden rushing sound took place down the
corridor, and Lucetta's excited figure, fully dressed, appeared in the
faint circle of light caused by my now rapidly waning candle.

"Miss Butterworth, what is the matter?" she asked, making as if she
would draw me into my room--a proceeding which I took good care she
should not succeed in.

Giving a glance at her dress, which was the same she had worn at the
supper table, I laughingly retorted:

"Isn't that a question I might better ask you? It is two o'clock by my
watch, and you, for all your apparent delicacy, are still up. What does
it mean, my dear? Have I put you out so completely by my coming that
none of you can sleep?"

Her eyes, which had fallen before mine, quickly looked up.

"I am sorry," she began, flushing and trying to take a peep into my
room, possibly to see if I had been to bed. "We did not mean to distu