The thought of my truancy was no balm to my conscience just then.

“As I came into the hall, I saw lights in the library. As you weren’t down last night the room hadn’t been lighted at all. I heard steps, and some one tapping with a hammer—”

“Yes; a hammer. Go on!”

It was, then, the same old story ! The war had been carried openly into the house, but Bates,—just why should any one connected with the conspiracy injure Bates, who stood so near to Pickering, its leader ? The fellow was undoubtedly hurt, there was no mistaking the lump on his head. He spoke with a painful difficulty that was not assumed, I felt increasingly sure, as he went on.

“I saw a man pulling out the books and tapping the inside of the shelves. He was working very fast. And the next thing I knew he let in another man through one of the terrace doors,—the one there that still stands a little open.”

He flinched as he turned slightly to indicate it, and his face twitched with pain.

“Never mind that ; tell the rest of your story.”

“Then I ran in, grabbed one of the big candelabra from the table, and went for the nearest man. They were about to begin on the chimney-breast there,—it was Mr. Glenarm’s pride in all the house,—and that accounts for my being there in front of the fireplace. They rather got the best of me, sir.”

“Clearly; I see they did. You had a hand-to-hand fight with them, and being two to one—”

“No; there were two of us,—don’t you understand, two of us ! There was another man who came running in from somewhere, and he took sides with me. I thought at first it was you. The robbers thought so, too, for one of them yelled, ‘Great God; it’s Glenarm !’ just like that. But it wasn’t you, but quite another person.”

“That’s a good story so far; and then what happened ?”

“I don’t remember much more, except that some one soused me with water that helped my head considerably, and the next thing I knew I was staring across the table there at you.”

“Who were these men, Bates ? Speak up quickly !”

My tone was peremptory: Here was, I felt, a crucial moment in our relations.

“Well,” he began deliberately, “I dislike to make charges against a fellow man, but I strongly suspect one of the men of being—”

“Yes ! Tell the whole truth or it will be the worse for you.”

“I very much fear one of them was Ferguson, the gardener over the way. I’m disappointed in him, sir.”

“Very good; and now for the other one.”