Mr. Tebbutts, by this time fully dressed, was swiftly bestowing a brush and comb in his knapsack. Perhaps he, too, had read the legend about Madame Sagesse. Flurry was silently, and with a perturbed countenance, examining the room; rapping at the panelling and peering up the cavernous chimney; I heard him sniff as he did so. Possibly he also held the dead-rat theory. He opened the flap in the door of the powdering-closet, and, striking a match, held it through the opening. I looked over his shoulder, and had a glimpse of black feathers on the floor, and a waft of a decidedly "charnel-'ouse" nature. "Damn!" muttered Flurry to himself, and slammed down the flap. "I think, sir," said Mr. Tebbutts, with his knapsack in his hand and his cap on his head, "I must ask you to let Mrs. Knox know that this 'ouse won't suit Mrs. William Tebbutts. You might just say I was called away rather sudden. Of course, you won't mention what I saw just now--I wouldn't wish to upset the pore old lady----" We followed him from the room, and treading softly as before, traversed the gallery, and began to descend the slippery oak stairs. Flurry was still looking furtively about him, and the thought crossed my mind that in the most hard-headed Irishman there wanders a vein of superstition. Before we had reached the first landing, the violent ringing of a handbell broke forth in the room with the light over the door, followed by a crash of fire-irons; then old Mrs. Knox's voice calling imperatively for Mullins. There was a sound of rushing, slippered feet, a bumping of furniture; with a squall from Mullins the door flew open, and I was endowed with a never-to-be-forgotten vision of Mrs. Knox, swathed in hundreds of shawls, in the act of hurling the tongs at some unseen object. Almost simultaneously there was a scurry of claws on the oak floor above us, Mrs. Knox's door was slammed, and something whizzed past me. I am thankful to think that I possess, as a companion vision to that of Mrs. Knox, the face of Mr. Tebbutts with the candle light on it as he looked up from the foot of the stairs and saw the Aussolas Martin Cat in his track. "Look out, Tebbutts!" yelled Flurry. "It's you he's after!" Mr. Tebbutts here passed out of the incident into the night, and the Aussolas Martin Cat was swallowed up by a large hole in the surbase in the corner of the first landing. "He'll come out in the wine-cellar," said Flurry, with the calm that was his in moments of crisis, "the way the cat did." I pulled myself together. "What's happened to the other Fanaghy cub?" I enquired with, I hope, equal calmness. "He's gone to blazes," replied Flurry; "there isn't a wall in this house that hasn't a way in it. I knew I'd never have luck with them after you asking the way from Kitty the Shakes." As is usual in my dealings with Flurry, the fault was mine.