Henry's master leaned against his handsome writing table, his face white as a sheet. It appeared to be a moment when quick action was rather important. "They'll try the bell first," said Varney. "Lock all the doors and windows downstairs, my man. Quick! When they ring, open a window upstairs, and ask what they want." Henry recognized the note of competent authority. He assumed, anyway, that it was the strange gentleman's quarrel they had so fortunately been let into, and it was only fair that he should manage it. "Very good, sir," he said and flew. "But I'm afraid," added Varney to Stanhope, "there is no doubt what they want." A single quiet footfall sounded on the porch and the door-bell pealed. In the silence that followed, the noise of the turning of locks and the drawing of bolts was distinctly audible in the study. "Damn you!" cried Stanhope, pale with the sudden white-hot passion of the unstable. "This is your doing--you--you masquerader!" The two men stood facing each other, hardly a yard apart. They were almost exactly of a figure, Stanhope being if anything a shade the taller. Each was conscious as he regarded the other that he might be looking at himself, intangibly altered, in a mirror; and the fancy was pleasing to neither. "I suppose I might as reasonably call you that," said Varney quietly. "I might as reasonably say that this knock on the head from Sam Orrick was your doing. The fact is that you were a fool to come back here. But as for those poor fellows out there--" The door-bell rang again, insistently, and he broke off. A window upstairs rattled open, and they heard a man's steady voice: "'I there on the piazza! What do you want?" "I want to see Mr. Stanhope a minute," called a thicker voice from below. "On important business." "'E's not 'ere," said faithful Henry. "'E's expected to arrive to-morrow." "You're a ---- ---- liar!" Immediately a general yelling arose, from farther back in the darkness. Diplomacy, it seemed, was about to be abandoned for immediate action. But over the sudden hubbub, that cool voice at the window rang out again: "Hif it's fight you want, Hi'll say we were expectin' you. There's ten of us 'ere, hall armed--" A derisive voice was heard in answer. "We'll see about that, my buck, pretty--soon--" "Men! Hi've got a brace of six-shooters 'ere in my 'and. The first of you as comes into the light gets a couple of 'oles drilled into 'is hinside, neat and clean." Having launched this threat from his inky window to gain a little time, Henry silently withdrew, flung downstairs and broke into the study, his scrape and bow forgotten, to inquire whether either of the gentlemen had, in Gawd's mercy, hanythink that would shoot. His master, whose well-kept hands were opening and shutting by his side, did not answer. "No," said Varney, "I am unarmed."