"Oh, yes! Tried his hand at this and that," he added rather blithely. He once worked for a moving-picture firm; fell from a six-story window for them. That is, he started to fall; something--a net or a platform--was supposed to catch him at the fifth, and then a dummy completed the descent and got smashed on the sidewalk. He was a little doubtful about their intercepting him at the fifth and that he, instead of the dummy--But he didn't seem to mind taking the risk--reflectively. They said he was a great success falling through the air, and they had him, in consequence, fall from all kinds of places,--through drawbridges into the water, for example. That's where he contracted a bad cold, and when he had recovered, another man had been found for the heavier-than-air rôle-- "What are you talking about?" The lady's back was stiffer than a poker. "If ever you go to a moving-picture palace of amusement, Madam, and see a streak in the air, you might reasonably conclude you are"--he bowed--"beholding me. I went once; it seemed funny. I hardly recognized myself in the part. I certainly seemed to be 'going some'," he murmured seriously. "Is there anything else, Madam, you would care to question me about?" "I think," she said significantly, "what I have learned is quite sufficient. If the occupations you have told me about are so disreputable--what were those you have kept so carefully concealed? For example, where were you and what were you doing four--five--six--years ago? You have already refused to answer. You relate only a few inconsequential and outré trifles. To cover up--What? What?" she repeated. Then she transfixed him with her eye; the dogs transfixed him with their eyes. Accusingly? Not all of them. Naughty's glance expressed approval; his tail underwent a friendly agitation. "Naughty!" said the lady sharply. Naughty gamboled around Horatio. "How odd!" murmured the mistress, more to herself than the other. "How very extraordinary!" "What, Madam?" he ventured. "That Naughty, who so seldom takes to strangers, should--" she found herself saying. "Perhaps it's the scent of the gasolene," he suggested. "It's _in spite of_ the gasolene," she retorted sharply. And for some moments ruminated. It was not until afterward Mr. Heatherbloom learned that her confidence in Naughty's instinct amounted to a hobby. Only once had she thought him at fault in his likes or dislikes of people; when he had showed a predilection for the assistant rector's shapely calves. But after that gentleman's elopement with a lady of the choir and his desertion of wife and children, Naughty's erstwhile disrespect for the cloth, which Miss Van Rolsen had grieved over, became illumined with force and significance. Thereafter she had never doubted him; he had barked at all twelve of Mr. Heatherbloom's predecessors--the dozen other answers to the advertisement; but here he was sedulous for fondlings from Horatio. Extraordinary truly! The lady hesitated.