Awaking from his siesta to find himself in the dark, he arose refreshed, and paid a dutiful call to his wife’s chamber before going out to dine at his club. The nurse met him upon the threshold and stepped out into the hall for a whispered colloquy. Both of her charges had been restless all the afternoon. The baby was colicky, Mrs. Ashe feverish and excited, although persisting that nothing ailed her. “She has an exquisitely susceptible nervous organization,” she continued in the parrotlike lingo of the trained nurse. “We must really guard her more carefully in future. She was talking about that novel in her sleep just now—begging you not to take it away from her and all that, in quite a wild way. There is evidently cerebral excitement. Perhaps, as you are going out, it might be prudent to telephone the doctor to drop in toward bedtime.” “Oh, a good sleep will set her up all right!” returned Barton slightingly. It did not suit his notions of marital rights to be interviewed and advised in a ghostly whisper without the precincts of his own room, by this pretentious hireling. “The book had nothing to do with her uncomfortable afternoon. It was probably the luncheon. I thought, when you brought it up, that it was more like a meal for a ditcher than for a delicate invalid.” Pleased at administering this Roland for accumulated Olivers, he ran downstairs without attending to her protest, and whistled softly while equipping himself for the walk through the snow. The night was sharply cold; the drifts were as dry as dust. He laughed like a boy in plowing through them. The return to bachelor freedom was not bad, for a change, and there were sure to be a lot of prime fellows at the club on a stormy holiday night. CHAPTER IV. AT eleven o’clock of that New Year’s night the snow still fell, but the wind had increased to a gale, and shook the eastward windows of Agnes Ashe’s bedchamber. Nurse and baby were sound asleep in the adjoining nursery. Even in the well-built house and curtained room, the night-light wavered in the unquiet air, sending fitful hosts of specter shadows scurrying over the ceiling and falling down the walls. Sometimes one dropped upon the bed and made mouths or crooked lean fingers at the convalescent. Now and then they whispered something in fleeing or skulking past. When this happened they spoke of her husband and how he had carried off both her babies downstairs. For Baby Nest’s crib was gone. She had been doubly robbed.