and there is no doubt this time as to who is the owner
of that terrified voice. Mrs. B.'s alarms have evidently taken some
other direction. "Henry, Henry!" she cries, in tones of a very
tolerable pitch. A lady being in the case, I fly upon the wings of
domestic love along the precincts sacred to the perambulations of
my great-grandfather. I arrive at my wife's chamber; the screams
continue, but the door is locked.

"Open, open!" shout I. "What on earth is the matter?"

There is silence; then a man's voice--that is to say, my wife's voice
in imitation of a man's--replies in tones of indignant ferocity, to
convey the idea of a life-preserver being under the pillow of the
speaker, and ready to his hand: "Who are you--what do you want?"

"You very silly woman," I answered; not from unpoliteness, but
because I find that that sort of language recovers and assures her of
my identity better than any other--"why, it's I."

The door is then opened about six or seven inches, and I am admitted
with all the precaution which attends the entrance of an ally into a
besieged garrison.

Mrs. B., now leaning upon my shoulder, dissolves into copious tears,
and points to the door communicating with my attiring-chamber.

"There's sur--sur--somebody been snoring in your dressing-room," she
sobs, "all the time you were away."

This statement is a little too much for my sense of humour, and
although sympathising very tenderly with poor Mrs. B., I cannot help
bursting into a little roar of laughter. Laughter and fear are deadly
enemies, and I can see at once that Mrs. B. is all the better for
this explosion.

"Consider, my love," I reason, "consider the extreme improbability of
a burglar or other nefarious person making such a use of the few
precious hours of darkness as to go to sleep in them! Why, too,
should he take a bedstead without a mattress, which I believe is the
case in this particular supposition of yours, when there were
feather-beds unoccupied in other apartments? Moreover, would not this
be a still greater height of recklessness in such an individual,
should he have a habit of snor----"

A slight noise in the dressing-room, occasioned by the Venetian blind
tapping against the window, here causes Mrs. B. to bury her head with
extreme swiftness, ostrichlike, beneath the pillow, so that the
peroration of my argument is lost upon her. I enter the suspected
chamber--this time with a lighted candle--and find my trousers, with