e other? But he had paused, forgetting, in his excitement, the
use of his weapon, and before he had bethought himself that the man
was still in his power, he heard the sound of the bell. "D----ation!"
he exclaimed. Then he turned round, left the room, hurried down the
stairs, and made his way out into the street, having again passed the
girl on his way.

Grey, when he perceived that his enemy was gone, turned round to look
for the bullet or its mark. He soon found the little hole in the
window-shutter, and probing it with the point of his pencil, came
upon the morsel of lead which might now just as readily have been
within his own brain. There he left it for the time, and then made
some not inaccurate calculation as to the narrowness of his own
escape. He had been standing directly between Vavasor and the
shutter, and he found, from the height of the hole, that the shot
must have passed close beneath his ear. He remembered to have heard
the click of the hammer, but he could not remember the sound of the
report, and when the girl entered the room, he perceived at once from
her manner that she was unaware that firearms had been used.

"Has that gentleman left the house?" Grey asked. The girl said that
he had left the house. "Don't admit him again," said he;--"that
is, if you can avoid it. I believe he is not in his right senses."
Then he asked for Mr Jones, his landlord, and in a few minutes the
pugilistic tailor was with him.

During those few minutes he had been called upon to resolve what he
would do now. Would he put the police at once upon the track of the
murderer, who was, as he remembered too well, the first cousin of the
woman whom he still desired to make his wife? That cross-examination
which he would have to undergo at the police-office, and again
probably in an assize court, in which all his relations with
the Vavasor family would be made public, was very vivid to his
imagination. That he was called upon by duty to do something he felt
almost assured. The man who had been allowed to make such an attempt
once with impunity, might probably make it again. But he resolved
that he need not now say anything about the pistol to the pugilistic
tailor, unless the tailor said something to him.

"Mr Jones," he said, "that man whom I had to put out of the room once
before, has been here again."

"Has there been another tussle, sir?"

"No;--nothing of that kind. But we must take some steps to prevent
his getting i