days that were yet to come.
The doctor was in excellent spirits, and almost oppressively

hospitable. We sat sociably chatting over our claret till past
eight o'clock. Then my host turned to his desk to write a letter

before the post want out; and I strolled away to smoke a cigar in
the garden.

Second-floor back windows all open, atmosphere as sultry as ever,
gardener's pruning-ladder quite safe in the tool-shed, savage

mastiff in his kennel crunching his bones for supper. Good. The
dog will not be visited again tonight: I may throw my medicated

bit of beef at once into his kennel. I acted on the idea
immediately; the dog seized his piece of beef; I heard a snap, a

wheeze, a choke, and a groan--and there was the mastiff disposed
of, inside the kennel, where nobody could find out that he was

dead till the time came for feeding him the next morning.
I went back to the doctor; we had a social glass of cold

brandy-and-water together; I lighted another cigar, and took my
leave. My host being too respectable a man not to keep early

country hours, I went away, as usual, about ten. The mysterious
man-servant locked the gate behind me. I sauntered on the road

back to Barkingham for about five minutes, then struck off sharp
for the plantation, lighted my lantern with the help of my cigar

and a brimstone match of that barbarous period, shut down the
slide again, and made for the garden wall.

It was formidably high, and garnished horribly with broken
bottles; but it was also old, and when I came to pick at the

mortar with my screw-driver, I found it reasonablyrotten with
age and damp.

I removed four bricks to make footholes in different positions up
the wall. It was desperately hard and long work, easy as it may

sound in description--especially when I had to hold on by the top
of the wall, with my flat opera hat (as we used to call it in

those days) laid, as a guard, between my hand and the glass,
while I cleared a way through the sharp bottle-ends for my other

hand and my knees. This done, my great difficulty was vanquished;
and I had only to drop luxuriously into a flower-bed on the other

side of the wall.
Perfect stillness in the garden: no sign of a light anywhere at

the back of the house: first-floor windows all shut: second-floor
windows still open. I fetched the pruning-ladder; put it against

the side of the porch; tied one end of my bit of rope to the top
round of it; took the other end in my mouth, and prepared to

climb to the balcony over the porch by the thick vine branches
and the trellis-work.

No man who has had any real experience of life can have failed to
observe how amazingly close, in critical situations, the

grotesque and the terrible, the comic and the serious, contrive
to tread on each other's heels. At such times, the last thing we

ought properly to think of comes into our heads, or the least
consistent event that could possibly be expected to happen does

actually occur. When I put my life in danger on that memorable
night, by putting my foot on the trellis-work, I absolutely

thought of the never-dying Lady Malkinshaw plunged in refreshing
slumber, and of the frantic exclamations Mr. Batterbury would

utter if he saw what her ladyship's grandson was doing with his
precious life and limbs at that critical moment. I am no hero--I

was fully aware of the danger to which I was exposing myself; and
yet I protest that I caught myself laughing under my breath, with

the most outrageous inconsistency, at the instant when I began
the ascent of the trellis-work.

I reached the balcony over the porch in safety, depending more
upon the tough vine branches than the trellis-work during my

ascent. My next employment was to pull up the pruning-ladder, as
softly as possible, by the rope which I held attached to it. This

done, I put the ladder against the house wall, listened, measured
the distance to the open second-floor window with my eye,

listened again--and, finding all quiet, began my second and last
ascent. The ladder was comfortably long, and I was conveniently

tall; my hand was on the window-sill--I mounted another two
rounds--and my eyes were level with the interior of the room.

Suppose any one should be sleeping there!
I listened at the window attentively before I ventured on taking

my lantern out of my coatpocket. The night was so quite and
airless that there was not the faintest rustle among the leaves

in the garden beneath me to distract my attention. I listened.
The breathing of the lightest of sleepers must have reached my

ear, through that intensestillness, if the room had been a
bedroom, and the bed were occupied. I heard nothing but the quick

beat of my own heart. The minutes of suspense were passing
heavily--I laid my other hand over the window-sill, then a moment

of doubt came--doubt whether I should carry the adventure any
further. I mastered my hesitation directly--it was too late for

second thoughts. "Now for it!" I whispered to myself, and got in
at the window.

To wait, listening again, in the darkness of that unknown region,
was more than I had courage for. The moment I was down on the

floor, I pulled the lantern out of my pocket and raised the
shade.

So far, so good--I found myself in a dirty lumber-room. Large
pans, some of them cracked and more of them broken; empty boxes

bound with iron, of the same sort as those I had seen the workmen
bringing in at the front gate; old coal sacks; a packing-case

full of coke; and a huge, cracked, mouldy blacksmith's
bellows--these were the principal objects that I observed in the

lumber-room. The one door leading out of it was open, as I had
expected it would be, in order to let the air through the back

window into the house. I took off my shoes, and stole into the
passage. My first impulse, the moment I looked along it, was to

shut down my lantern-shade, and listen again.
Still I heard nothing; but at the far end of the passage I saw a

bright light pouring through the half-opened door of one of the
mysterious front rooms.

I crept softly toward it. A decidedlychemical smell began to
steal into my nostrils--and, listening again, I thought I heard

above me, and in some distant room, a noise like the low growl of
a large furnace, muffled in some peculiar manner. Should I

retrace my steps in that direction? No--not till I had seen
something of the room with the bright light, outside of which I

was now standing. I bent forward softly; looking by little and
little further and further through the opening of the door, until

my head and shoulders were fairly inside the room, and my eyes
had convinced me that no living soul, sleeping or waking, was in

any part of it at that particular moment. Impelled by a fatal
curiosity, I entered immediately, and began to look about me with

eager eyes.
I saw iron ladles, pans full of white sand, files with white

metal left glittering in their teeth, molds of plaster of Paris,
bags containing the same material in powder, a powerful machine

with the name and use of which I was theoretically not
unacquainted, white metal in a partially-fused state, bottles of

aquafortis, dies scattered over a dresser, crucibles, sandpaper,
bars of metal, and edged tools in plenty, of the strangest

construction. I was not at all a scrupulous man, as the reader
knows by this time; but when I looked at these objects, and

thought of Alicia, I could not for the life of me help
shuddering. There was not the least doubt about it, even after

the little I had seen: the important chemical pursuits to which
Doctor Dulcifer was devoting himself, meant, in plain English and

in one word--Coining.
Did Alicia know what I knew now, or did she only suspect it?