No sound was heard, save the low, tremulous swash of the sleet outside, or the death-rattle in the throat of the bath-tub. Then all was as still as the bosom of a fried chicken when the spirit has departed. The swallow-tail coat hung limp and weary in the wardrobe, and the gross receipts of the evening were under my pillow. I needed sleep, for I was worn out with travel and anxiety, but the fear of being robbed kept me from repose. I know how desperate a man becomes when he yearns for another's gold. I know how cupidity drives a wicked man to angle his victim, that he may win precarious prosperity, and how he will often take a short cut to wealth by means of murder, when, if he would enter politics, he might accomplish his purpose as surely and much more safely. Anon, however, tired nature succumbed. I know I had succumbed, for the bell-boy afterward testified that he heard me do so. The gentle warmth of the steam-heated room, and the comforting assurance of duty well done and the approval of friends, at last lulled me into a gentle repose. Anyone who might have looked upon me, as I lay there in that innocent slumber, with the winsome mouth slightly ajar and the playful limbs cast wildly about, while a merry smile now and then flitted across the regular features, would have said that no heart could be so hard as to harbor ill for one so guileless and so simple. I do not know what it was that caused me to wake. Some slight sound or other, no doubt, broke my slumber, and I opened my eyes wildly. The room was in semi-darkness. Hark! A slight movement in the corner, and the low, regular breathing of a human being! I was now wide awake. Possibly I could have opened my eyes wider but not without spilling them out of their sockets. Regularly came that soft, low breathing. Each time it seemed like a sigh of relief, but it did not relieve me. Evidently it was not done for that purpose. It sounded like a sigh of blessed relief, such as a woman might heave after she has returned from church and transferred herself from the embrace of her new Russia iron, black silk dress into a friendly wrapper. Regularly, like the rise, and fall of a wave on the summer sea, it rose and fell, while my pale lambrequin of hair rose and fell fitfully with it. I know that people who read this will laugh at it, but there was nothing to laugh at. At first I feared that the sigh might be that of a woman who had entered the room through a transom in order to see me, as I lay wrapt in slumber, and then carry the picture away to gladden her whole life. But no. That was hardly possible. It was cupidity that had driven some cruel villain to enter my apartments and to crouch in the gloom till the proper moment should come in which to spring upon me, throttle me, crowd a hotel pillow into each lung, and, while I did the Desdemona act, rob me of my hard-earned wealth.