He admitted his error humbly, and we passed to the other floors. Here the feeling of relief disappeared from my mind, as we would surely find Alloway near the roof since he was not in the cellar. We searched three rooms, and then I put my hand upon the bolt fastening the door of the third. "It is my bedroom," said Miss Desmond. "I regret to say that I am compelled to search it too," I replied. She bowed, making no further opposition, and, turning the key, I entered. It was a large, light apartment. In a corner the high bed stood within its white curtains, there were heavy rugs on the floor, a little round table of ebony, and at the far end of the room, tongs and shovel of brass hung beside the grate, in which two brazen fire dogs upheld haughty heads. It was a handsome room, worthy of its mistress, and yet I could not spare it. I looked everywhere,--behind the curtains, under the bed, and in the clothes-closets,--but I did not find Alloway. When I finished Miss Desmond said to me,-- "I hope you believe that no man is concealed in my room." The color had risen in her cheeks, and I replied in great haste,-- "I have not believed it any time, Miss Desmond, and only my duty compelled me to look here." What a consoling word those four little letters, "d-u-t-y," sometimes spell! Blathwayt came to me the next moment, and reported that he had searched the upper rooms and the garret without finding the lost soldier. "But what a house it would be to loot!" he added in a whisper to me, showing, like his comrade, those predatory instincts which the British soldier often loves to indulge. I pretended to a belief that he had not searched well the top of the house, and to show my zeal insisted upon conducting a hunt in those regions myself. But I thought, as I ascended the last stairway, that it would be rather a grim joke on me, if I found Alloway there after Blathwayt had failed to do so. But no such bad luck happened, and ten minutes later I announced with great but secret joy that his Britannic Majesty's army in Philadelphia had done Mr. Desmond an injustice; no soldier was concealed in his house, and I was sure that none ever had been. But while I said this I was wondering what had become of Alloway; he had entered the Desmond house, I knew beyond a doubt, and he must be in it yet, hidden in some secret recess. Well, at any rate, the luck which Marcel claimed was watching over us was still on guard. "I shall be pleased to tell your father how vain our search has been," I said to Miss Desmond. But Mr. Desmond was yet in his own room and would not come forth. The haughty old Quaker, as was evident to us all, considered this search of his house a piece of gross insolence. "I trust that I shall never again be sent on such an errand," I said to Miss Desmond as we prepared to go.