“Then would you very much mind--” and Bram could see that her breast was heaving under the influence of some strong emotion, “keeping your eye upon this place until I come back? You know all about it,” she went on, with a burst of uneasy confidence, “so that it’s no use my minding that. And when my father’s left alone--well, well, you know,” said she, blushing crimson, and keeping her eyes down. “And Joan has to go home to her husband and children at night. And--and I’m afraid when he gets excited, you know, that he’ll set the place on fire. He nearly did last night. You see, my poor father has a great many worries, and a very little affects his head--since that sabre cut in India.” The humility, nay, the humiliation in her tone, touched Bram to the quick. He promised at once that he would take care that Mr. Biron did no harm either to himself or to the house while she was away, and received her grateful, breathless, little whisper of “Thank you; oh, thank you,” with outward stolidity, but with considerable emotion. Then she ran off, and he went quietly on with his work. It took him a very short time to finish putting on the one coat of paint, which was all he could do that night; and then, as Mr. Biron had not appeared again, Bram thought he had better take a look round and see what that gentleman was doing. So he took up his paint-can, and, leaving the door open to dry, made his way round to the front of the house, and peeped cautiously in at the lower windows; and in one of them he saw a couple of empty champagne bottles, with the corks lying beside them, and an overturned glass on the table. “T’owd rascal hasn’t wasted much time,” thought Bram to himself, as he stared at the evidences of Mr. Biron’s solitary dissipation, and looked about for the toper himself. But Theodore was not in the room. Neither was he in the room on the other side of the front door, as Bram hastened to ascertain. Perhaps he had had sense enough to make his way upstairs to his own room to sleep off the effects of the wine. This seeming to be a probable explanation of his disappearance, Bram was inclined to trouble himself no further on that head, when a faint noise, which seemed to proceed from the bowels of the earth, attracted his attention. There was a grating under the window of the room which appeared to be the dining-room, and in the cellar which was thus dimly lighted some one appeared to be moving about. Bram, in his character of sworn guardian of the house, thought it best to investigate, so he ran round to the back, entered by the open door, and found a trap-door in the hall just outside the kitchen door. A strong smell of paraffin was the first thing he noticed as he looked down the ladder; the next was the sight of Mr. Biron calmly emptying a can of the oil upon the loose straw and firewood which the cellar contained.