ing excited and strange, and trotting about the
pantry in a way not usual unless he had heard a rat.

I dressed as quickly as I could, and went out into the passage. All
dark and silent, and the smell very faint. I went up-stairs and looked
all about; but everything was as I left it; and at last I went down
again to the pantry, thinking and wondering, with Tom at my heels, to
find that the smell had passed away. So I sat and thought for a bit,
and then went to bed again; but I didn't sleep a wink, and somehow all
this seemed to me to be very strange.

STORY TWO, CHAPTER SIX.

A SUDDEN CHANGE.

If any one says I played spy, I am ready to speak up pretty strongly in
my self-defence, for my aim always was to do my duty by Sir John my
master; but I could not help seeing two or three things during the next
fortnight, and they all had to do with a kind of telegraphing going on
from our house to the one over the way, where Miss Adela generally
appeared to be on the watch; and her looks always seemed to me to say:
"No; you mustn't think of such a thing," and to be inviting him all the
time. Then, all at once I thought I was wrong, for I went up as usual
at half-past seven to take Mr Barclay's boots and his clothes which had
been brought down the night before, after he had dressed for dinner. I
tapped and went in, just as I'd always done ever since he was a boy, and
went across to the window and drew the curtains. "Nice morning, Master
Barclay," I said. "Half-past--" There I stopped, and stared at the bed,
which all lay smooth and neat, as the housemaid had turned it down, for
no one had slept in it that night. I was struck all of a heap, and
didn't know what to think. To me it was just like a silver spoon or
fork being missing, and setting one's head to work to think whether it
was anywhere about the house.

He hadn't stopped to take his wine with Sir John after dinner; but that
was nothing fresh, for they'd been very cool lately. Then I hadn't seen
him in the drawing-room; but that was nothing fresh neither, for he had
avoided Miss Virginia for some little time.

"It is very strange," I thought, for I had not seen him go out; and
then, all at once I gave quite a start, for I felt that he must have
done what Sir John had told him to do--gone.

"That won't do," I said directly after. "He wouldn't have gone like
that;" and I went straight to Sir John's room and told him, as in duty
bound, what I had found o