"You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on

an October afternoon," said the niece, indicating a large
French window that opened on to a lawn.

"It is quite warm for the time of the year," said
Framton; "but has that window got anything to do with the

tragedy?"
"Out through that window, three years ago to a day,

her husband and her two young brothers went off for their
day's shooting. They never came back. In crossing the

moor to their favourite snipe-shooting ground they were
all three engulfed in a treacherous piece of bog. It had

been that dreadful wet summer, you know, and places that
were safe in other years gave way suddenly without

warning. Their bodies were never recovered. That was
the dreadful part of it." Here the child's voice lost

its self-possessed note and became falteringly human.
"Poor aunt always thinks that they will come back some

day, they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with
them, and walk in at that window just as they used to do.

That is why the window is kept open every evening till it
is quite dusk. Poor dear aunt, she has often told me how

they went out, her husband with his white waterproof coat
over his arm, and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing

'Bertie, why do you bound?' as he always did to tease
her, because she said it got on her nerves. Do you know,

sometimes on still, quiet evenings like this, I almost
get a creepy feeling that they will all walk in through

that window - "
She broke off with a little shudder. It was a

relief to Framton when the aunt bustled into the room
with a whirl of apologies for being late in making her

appearance.
"I hope Vera has been amusing you?" she said.

"She has been very interesting," said Framton.
"I hope you don't mind the open window," said Mrs.

Sappleton briskly; "my husband and brothers will be home
directly from shooting, and they always come in this way.

They've been out for snipe in the marshes to-day, so
they'll make a fine mess over my poor carpets. So like

you men-folk, isn't it?"
She rattled on cheerfully about the shooting and the

scarcity of birds, and the prospects for duck in the
winter. To Framton it was all purelyhorrible. He made

a desperate but only partially successful effort to turn
the talk on to a less ghastly topic; he was conscious

that his hostess was giving him only a fragment of her
attention, and her eyes were constantly straying past him

to the open window and the lawn beyond. It was certainly
an unfortunatecoincidence that he should have paid his

visit on this tragic anniversary.
"The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest, an

absence of mentalexcitement, and avoidance of anything
in the nature of violentphysical exercise," announced

Framton, who laboured under the tolerably wide-spread
delusion that total strangers and chance acquaintances

are hungry for the least detail of one's ailments and
infirmities, their cause and cure. "On the matter of

diet they are not so much in agreement," he continued.
"No?" said Mrs. Sappleton, in a voice which only

replaced a yawn at the last moment. Then she suddenly
brightened into alert attention - but not to what Framton

was saying.
"Here they are at last!" she cried. "Just in time

for tea, and don't they look as if they were muddy up to
the eyes!"

Framton shivered slightly and turned towards the
niece with a look intended to convey sympathetic

comprehension. The child was staring out through the
open window with dazed horror in her eyes. In a chill

shock of nameless fear Framton swung round in his seat
and looked in the same direction.

In the deepening twilight three figures were walking
across the lawn towards the window; they all carried guns

under their arms, and one of them was additionally
burdened with a white coat hung over his shoulders. A

tired brown spaniel kept close at their heels.
Noiselessly they neared the house, and then a hoarse

young voice chanted out of the dusk: "I said, Bertie, why
do you bound?"

Framton grabbed wildly at his stick and hat; the
hall-door, the gravel-drive, and the front gate were

dimly-noted stages in his headlongretreat. A cyclist
coming along the road had to run into the hedge to avoid

an imminent collision.
"Here we are, my dear," said the bearer of the white

mackintosh, coming in through the window; "fairly muddy,
but most of it's dry. Who was that who bolted out as we

came up?"
"A most extraordinary man, a Mr. Nuttel," said Mrs.

Sappleton; "could only talk about his illnesses, and
dashed off without a word of good-bye or apology when you

arrived. One would think he had seen a ghost."
"I expect it was the spaniel," said the niece

calmly; "he told me he had a horror of dogs. He was once
hunted into a cemetery somewhere on the banks of the

Ganges by a pack of pariah dogs, and had to spend the
night in a newly dug grave with the creatures snarling

and grinning and foaming just above him. Enough to make
anyone their nerve."

Romance at short notice was her speciality.
THE TREASURE SHIP

THE great galleon lay in semi-retirement under the
sand and weed and water of the northern bay where the

fortune of war and weather had long ago ensconced it.
Three and a quarter centuries had passed since the day

when it had taken the high seas as an important unit of a
fighting squadron - precisely which squadron the learned

were not agreed. The galleon had brought nothing into
the world, but it had, according to tradition and report,

taken much out of it. But how much? There again the
learned were in disagreement. Some were as generous in

their estimate as an income-tax assessor, others applied
a species of higher criticism to the submerged treasure

chests, and debased their contents to the currency of
goblin gold. Of the former school was Lulu, Duchess of

Dulverton.
The Duchess was not only a believer in the existence

of a sunken treasure of alluring proportions; she also
believed that she knew of a method by which the said

treasure might be precisely located and cheaply
disembedded. An aunt on her mother's side of the family

had been Maid of Honour at the Court of Monaco, and had
taken a respectful interest in the deep-sea researches in

which the Throne of that country, impatient perhaps of
its terrestrial restrictions, was wont to immerse itself.

It was through the instrumentality of this relative that
the Duchess learned of an invention, perfected and very

nearly patented by a Monegaskan savant, by means of which
the home-life of the Mediterranean sardine might be

studied at a depth of many fathoms in a cold white light
of more than ball-room brilliancy. Implicated in this