"I've been all about here," said the sergeant quietly. "They must have meant the jewels and things up-stairs. Next thing is to go up and wake your guv'ner." "What, alone?" said the butler blankly. "Come along, then, and I'll go with you." "I'll come too, sergeant," said Artingale. "Don't alarm the ladies if you can help it." And together they mounted the thickly-carpeted stairs. PART TWO, CHAPTER FOURTEEN. GONE! WHERE? If one could but bring oneself to the belief, there is only a slight difference between day and night, and that difference is that in the latter case there is an absence of light--that is all; but, somehow, we people the darkness with untold horrors. We ignore it, of course; we should ridicule the impeachment, but the fact remains the same, that probably nineteen people out of every twenty are afraid of being in the dark--perhaps more so than they were when children. Possibly we grow more nervous than when we were young, or gas may have had something to do with it; certainly more people seem to burn lights in their bedrooms than used to be the case before a gas-burner or two had become the regular furniture of a well-ordered bedroom in town. In our fathers' days, people who were invalids burned long, thin, dismal rushlights in shades, with the candle itself in the middle of a cup of water; or else they had a glass containing so much oil floating on water, and a little wick upon its own raft, sailing about like a miniature floating beacon in the oil. But still these were the exceptions, and a light in a bedroom was an uncommon thing. At the same time, though, it must be allowed that there is something fear-exciting about the dark rooms, and that sounds that are unnoticed in the broad daylight acquire a strange weirdness if heard when all else is still. People have a bad habit of being taken ill in the night; burglars choose "the sma'" hours for breaking into houses; sufferers from indigestion select the darkness for their deeds of evil known as sleep-walking; and the imps attendant on one's muscles prefer two or three o'clock in the so-called morning for putting our legs on that rack known as the cramp. It is perhaps after all excusable then for people to indulge, in moderation, in a little nocturnal alarm; and it may also, for aught we know, be good for us, and act as a safety-valve escape for a certain amount of bad nerve-force. No doubt Priam was terribly alarmed when his curtains were drawn in the dead of the night--as much so, perhaps, as the mobled queen; and therefore it was quite excusable for the Rector to answer the summons of the head of his wedding staff of servants in a state of no little excitement. "Dreadful! extraordinary! most strange?" he faltered. "You were passing, Henry, eh?" "Yes: Mr Magnus and I were going by, and we found the policeman had discovered that the door was open."