I do not know what it was that caused me to wake. Some slight sound or other, no doubt, broke my slumber, and I opened my eyes wildly. The room was in semi-darkness. Hark! A slight movement in the corner, and the low, regular breathing of a human being! I was now wide awake. Possibly I could have opened my eyes wider, but not without spilling them out of their sockets. Regularly came that soft, low breathing. Each time it seemed like a sigh of relief, but it did not relieve me. Evidently it was not done for that purpose. It sounded like a sigh of blessed relief, such as a woman might heave after she has returned from church and transferred herself from the embrace of her new Russia iron, black silk dress into a friendly wrapper. Regularly, like the rise and fall of a wave on the summer sea, it rose and fell, while my pale lambrequin of hair rose and fell fitfully with it. I know that people who read this will laugh at it, but there was nothing to laugh at. At first I feared that the sigh might be that of a woman who had entered the room through a transom in order to see me, as I lay wrapt in slumber, and then carry the picture away to gladden her whole life. But no. That was hardly possible. It was cupidity that had driven some cruel villain to enter my apartments and to crouch in the gloom till the proper moment should come in which to spring upon me, throttle me, crowd a hotel pillow into each lung, and, while I did the Desdemona act, rob me of my hard-earned wealth. Regularly still rose the soft breathing, as though the robber might be trying to suppress it. I reached gently under the pillow, and securing the money I put it in the pocket of my _robe de nuit_. Then, with great care, I pulled out a copy of Smith & Wesson's great work on “How to Ventilate the Human Form.” I said to myself that I would sell my life as dearly as possible, so that whoever bought it would always regret the trade. Then I opened the volume at the first chapter and addressed a thirty-eight calibre remark in the direction of the breath in the corner. When the echoes had died away a sigh of relief welled up from the dark corner. Also another sigh of relief later on. I then decided to light the gas and fight it out. You have no doubt seen a man scratch a match on the leg of his pantaloons. Perhaps you have also seen an absent-minded man undertake to do so, forgetting that his pantaloons were hanging on a chair at the other end of the room. However, I lit the gas with my left hand and kept my revolver pointed toward the dark corner where the breath was still rising and falling. People who had heard my lecture came rushing in, hoping to find that I had suicided, but they found that, instead of humoring the public in that way, I had shot the valve off the steam radiator. It is humiliating to write the foregoing myself, but I would rather do so than have the affair garbled by careless hands. Catching a Buffalo.