"Oho! Circumspect! That puts a new light on the case. What have you been up to, madam?" I spoke very severely. She very properly ignored the banality. "If I should write you a nice, agreeable letter, explaining as much as I can, won't you be satisfied?" "I prefer to have it by word of mouth." She seemed to be considering. "I will come to this window to-morrow night at this time and--and let you know," she said reluctantly. "Very well," said I. "We'll let it rest till then." "And, by the way, I have something more to ask of you. Is it quite necessary to have all this pounding and hammering going on in the castle? The noise is dreadful. I don't ask it on my own account, but for the baby. You see, she's quite ill with a fever, Mr. Smart. Perhaps you've heard her crying." "The baby?" I muttered. "It is nothing serious, of course. The doctor was here to-day and he reassured me--" "A--a doctor here to-day?" I gasped. She laughed once more. Verily, it was a gentle, high-bred laugh. "Will you please put a stop to the noise for a day or two?" she asked, very prettily. "Certainly," said I too surprised to say anything else. "Is--is there anything else?" "Nothing, thank you," she replied. Then: "Good night, Mr. Smart. You are very good." "Don't forget to-morrow--" But the oblong aperture disappeared with a sharp click, and I found myself staring at the blank, sphynx-like wall. Taking up my pad, my pipe and my pencil, and leaving all of my cherished ideas out there in the cruel darkness, never to be recovered,--at least not in their original form,--I scrambled through the window, painfully scraping my knee in passing,--just in time to escape the deluge. I am sure I should have enjoyed a terrific drenching if she had chosen to subject me to it. CHAPTER IV I BECOME AN ANCESTOR True to the promise she had extracted from me, I laid off my workmen the next morning. They trooped in bright and early, considerably augmented by fresh recruits who came to share the benefits of my innocuous prodigality, and if I live to be a thousand I shall never again experience such a noisome half hour as the one I spent in listening to their indignant protests against my tyrannical oppression of the poor and needy. In the end, I agreed to pay them, one and all, for a full day's work, and they went away mollified, calling me a true gentleman to my face and heaven knows what to my back. I spoke gently to them of the sick baby. With one voice they all shouted: "But _our_ babies are sick!" One octogenarian--a carpenter's apprentice--heatedly informed me, through Schmick, that he had a child two weeks old that would die before morning if deprived of proper food and nourishment. Somewhat impressed by this pitiful lament, I enquired how his wife was getting along. The ancient, being in a placid state of senility, courteously thanked me for my interest, and answered that she had been dead for forty-nine years, come September. I overlooked the slight discrepancy.