seemed stealthily to invade the house itself,
stilling and chilling it as it drew closer around its central heart
of warmth and life. Only once the frigid stillness was broken by the
opening of a door and steps along the corridor. This was preceded by an
acrid smell of burning bark.

It was subtle enough to permeate the upper floor and the bedroom of
Marie du Page, who was that night a light and nervous sleeper. Peering
from her door, she could see, on the lower corridor, the extraordinary
spectacle of Uncle Sylvester, robed in a gorgeous Japanese dressing-gown
of quilted satin trimmed with the fur of the blue fox, candle in hand,
leisurely examining the wall of the passage. Presently, drawing out a
footrule from his pocket, he actually began to measure it! Miss Du
Page saw no more. Hurriedly closing her door, she locked and bolted it,
firmly convinced that Gabriel Lane was harboring in the guise of Uncle
Sylvester a somnambulist, a maniac, or an impostor.

PART II.

"It doesn't seem as if Uncle Sylvester was any the more comfortable
for having his own private bedding with him," said Kitty Lane, entering
Marie's room early the next morning. "Bridget found him curled up in his
furs like a cat asleep on the drawing-room sofa this morning."

Marie started; she remembered her last night's vision. But some
instinct--she knew not what--kept her from revealing it at this moment.
She only said a little ironically:--

"Perhaps he missed the wild freedom of his barbaric life in a small
bedroom."

"No. Bridget says he said something about being smoked out of his room
by a ridiculous wood fire. The idea! As if a man brought up in the woods
couldn't stand a little smoke. No--that's his excuse! Marie!--do you
know what I firmly believe?"

"No," said Marie quickly.

"I firmly believe that poor man is ashamed of his past rough life,
and does everything he can to forget it. That's why he affects those
ultra-civilized and effeminate ways, and goes to the other extreme, as
people always do."

"Then you think he's really reformed, and isn't likely to take an
impulse to rob and murder anybody again?"

"Why, Marie, what nonsense!"

Nevertheless, Uncle Sylvester appeared quite fresh and cheerful at
breakfast. It seemed that he had lit the fire before undressing, but
the green logs were piled so far into the room that the smoke nearly
suffocated him. Fearful of alarming the house by letting the smoke
escape through the door