n or two, but she gave me no chance. As she
went out I saw her glance at my candlestick. There was only a
half-burned end in it. She is calculating, too, how long I sat up,
thought I.

Lucetta stood at the head of the stairs as I went down.

"Will you excuse me for a few moments?" said she. "I am not quite ready
to follow you, but will be soon."

"I will take a look at the grounds."

I thought she hesitated for a moment; then her face lighted up. "Be sure
you don't encounter the dog," she cried, and slipped hastily down a side
hall I had not noticed the night before.

"Ah, a good way to keep me in," I reasoned. "But I shall see the grounds
yet if I have to poison that dog." Notwithstanding, I made no haste to
leave the house. I don't believe in tempting Providence, especially
where a dog is concerned.

Instead of that, I stood still and looked up and down the halls,
endeavoring to get some idea of their plan and of the location of my own
room in reference to the rest.

I found that the main hall ran at right angles to the long corridor down
which I had just come, and noting that the doors opening into it were of
a size and finish vastly superior to those I had passed in the corridor
just mentioned, I judged that the best bedrooms all lay front, and that
I had been quartered at the end of what had once been considered as the
servants' hall. At my right, as I looked down the stairs, ran a wall
with a break, which looked like an opening into another corridor, and
indeed I afterward learned that the long series of rooms of which mine
was the last, had its counterpart on the other side of this enormous
dwelling, giving to the house the shape of a long, square U.

I was looking in some wonderment at this opening and marvelling over the
extravagant hospitality of those old days which necessitated such a
number of rooms in a private gentleman's home, when I heard a door open
and two voices speaking. One was rough and careless, unmistakably that
of William Knollys. The other was slow and timid, and was just as
unmistakably that of the man who had driven me to this house the day
before. They were talking of some elderly person, and I had good sense
enough not to allow my indignation to blind me to the fact that by that
elderly person they meant me. This is important, for their words were
not without significance.

"How shall we keep the old girl out of the house till it is all over?"
was what I heard from William's sur