fered his hand.

She laid hers within it, and his first thought was to take her into his
consulting-room, but he led her upstairs towards the drawing-room, and
she walked firmly enough till they were nearly at the landing, when he
felt her swerve, and but for his quick action she would have fallen
back.

"My poor darling!" he whispered, as he lifted her in his arms. "You
have done most bravely. It has been too much for any woman to go
through."

It was but a few steps, and then he paused upon the landing while he
threw open the drawing-room door and bore her in, quite insensible now
to all that passed.

For as he entered the room Chester found himself face to face with his
sister; but she was not, as he had anticipated, alone. Isabel was with
her, and they stood gazing at him as if stunned by the sudden intrusion.

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO.

SOMETHING IN THE SAWDUST.

Highcombe Street gradually became blocked by the eager crowd always
ready to gather, discuss and microscopically magnify the event that has
been the attraction, and in a very short time it was current that a
dreadful deed had been perpetrated in open daylight at the window of the
ground floor room on the left of the front door. The victim was said to
have been seen shrieking wildly for help, till a man had dragged her
away, closing the window afterward and shutting the shutters, so that,
with the blinds of the upstairs windows drawn down, the whole of the
mansion had a strangely-mysterious aspect which, to the over-heated
brains of many of the lookers-on, exactly suggested the place where, a
murder might have been committed.

It did not occur to the wonder-gulpers that there were several houses in
the same street presenting precisely the same aspect consequent upon
their owners being out of town, and that the mansion next door, with its
gloomy, unkempt aspect and soot-coated windows, was much more
forbidding; but then it had no policeman stationed at the area gate and
two more at the front door, who objected vigorously to boys climbing
over the railings and others trying to peer through the long, slit-like
windows on either side of the entrance.

An Englishman's house is said to be his castle, and serious steps
generally have to be taken by the police before they break in, the great
exception to the rule being in the case of firemen, who as soon as they
are convinced that their enemy is in the place, make no scruple about
using their axes aga