The House of a Thousand Candles

ith the villagers who supplied us with provender. I readily found my way to the kitchen and to a flight of stairs beyond, which connected the first and second floors. The house was dark, and my g

r and anxious to get into more comfortable clothes. Once on the second floor I felt that I knew the way to my room, a

of my room was open and a faint light flashed once into the hall and d

ed, and a vo

I'll try again to-morrow. I swear to

f the hammer. After several minutes more of this th

et unknown; second, they had been unsuccessful and must wait for another opportunity; and third, the business, whatever it was, was

instantly a hurried scamper above, and the heavy fall of one who had stumbled in the dark. I grinned with real pleasure at the sound of this mishap, hurried into the great library, which was as dark as a well, and, opening one of the long windows

ows, I saw Bates, with a candle h

and stepped out to see if the moon had risen. I don'

he tapers with his

ir. About seven o'clock, I shoul

to protect himself? I kicked the logs in the fireplace impatiently in my uncertainty. The man slowly lighted the many candles in the great apartment. He was certainly a deep one, and his case grew more puzzling as I studied it in relation to the rifle-shot of the night before, hi

the stairway, and

ll it extra delicate, Mr. Glenarm. I suppose

r hour one day and change it the next. Bates wished to make conversation,-the sure

in the rooms and found them all in the good order established by Bates. He had carried my trunks and bags to a store-room, so that everything I owned must have passed under his eye. My money even, the remnant of my fortune that I had drawn from the New York bank, I had placed carelessly enough in the drawer of a chiffonnier otherwise piled with collars. It took but a moment to

s as a beginning, I found a moment later a spot of tallow under a heavy table in one corner. Evidently the furniture had been moved to permit of the closest scrutiny of the paneling. Even behind the bed I found the same impress of the hammer-head; the test had undoubtedly been

chambers with cartridges and thrust it into my hip pocket, whistling meanwhile Larry Donovan's favorite air, the Marche Funèbre d'une Marionnette. My heart went out t

en Bates placed before me was a delight to the eye,-so adorned was it with spices, so crisply brown its outer coat; and a taste-that first tentative taste, bef

e I could see him, "you cook amazingly

rm. I had to learn to satisfy him, and I believ

out, did he? I can

was his heart. He h

as the other. I believe I prefer to keep my digestion going as long a

n at any time since a certain evening on which Larry and I had escaped from Tangier with our lives and the curses of the police. It is a melancholy commentary on life that contentment comes more easily through the stomach than along any other avenue. In

ecoming in me to sit on the wall, however unwillingly, and listen to the words-few though they were-that passed between her and the chaplain. I forgot the shot through the window; I forgot

I had found, the faint suggestion of a path. The moon glorified a broad highway across the water; the air was sharp and still. The houses in the summer colony were vaguely defined, but the sight

s of St. Agatha's, but the place was wholly silent. I drew out a cigarette and was about to light it when I heard a sound as of a tread on stone. There was, I knew, no stone pavement at hand, but peering toward the l

sing from the wainscoting of my own room in Glenarm Ho

s beyond it. I drew up my legs and crouched in the shadow of the pillar, revolver in hand. I was not anxious for an encounter; I mu

ed the stone base under the gate, likewise the pillars, evidently without results, struck a spiteful crack upon the i

an," I said, settling t

staring at me hard, and instinctively drawing the h

id pleasantly, and dropped to a sitting position

dangling at arm's length, whil

know what you mean by prowling ab

Glenarm? Well, you certa

and his teeth showed ple

n't answered my question. What w

gain, shaki

arm. I wasn't in your house to-d

I saw his eyes, and he wore unmistakably the air of a man whose conscience is perfectly clea

ounds now, can you?" I had dropped the r

Glenarm. If you'll a

sely what I w

elt the least bit foolish to be pointing a pisto

" I com

ake left me with the job of building a fence on his place, and I've been expecting to come over to look at this all fall. You see, Mr. Glenarm, your

so much assurance that I had been prepared for some r

-you are undoubtedly a scoundrel of the fir

illed for saying

g through windows at a man's h

n me. You exaggerate my importance, Mr. Glenarm.

an, if you swore on a stack o

e ejaculate

r near the outer edge and in such a manner that the handle flew around and smote me smartly in the face. By the time I reached the

ng figure of the caretaker. He clearly had the advantage of familiarity with the wood, striking off boldly into the heart of it, and quickly widening the distance between us; but I kept on, even after I ceased to hear h

ust as well, I thought, to possess myself of the hammer; and I dropped down on t

candles just as I had left it, and sat down before the fire to m