Yet I fell asleep on a memory of the evening that brought me a sort of shamed pleasure--that I had falsely borne the stick and gloves of Cousin Egbert. I knew they had given me rather an air. CHAPTER EIGHT I have never been able to recall the precise moment the next morning when I began to feel a strange disquietude but the opening hours of the day were marked by a series of occurrences slight in themselves yet so cumulatively ominous that they seemed to lower above me like a cloud of menace. Looking from my window, shortly after the rising hour, I observed a paper boy pass through the street, whistling a popular melody as he ran up to toss folded journals into doorways. Something I cannot explain went through me even then; some premonition of disaster slinking furtively under my casual reflection that even in this remote wild the public press was not unknown. Half an hour later the telephone rang in a lower room and I heard Mrs. Effie speak in answer. An unusual note in her voice caused me to listen more attentively. I stepped outside my door. To some one she was expressing amazement, doubt, and quick impatience which seemed to culminate, after she had again, listened, in a piercing cry of consternation. The term is not too strong. Evidently by the unknown speaker she had been first puzzled, then startled, then horrified; and now, as her anguished cry still rang in my ears, that snaky premonition of evil again writhed across my consciousness. Presently I heard the front door open and close. Peering into the hallway below I saw that she had secured the newspaper I had seen dropped. Her own door now closed upon her. I waited, listening intently. Something told me that the incident was not closed. A brief interval elapsed and she was again at the telephone, excitedly demanding to be put through to a number. “Come at once!” I heard her cry. “It’s unspeakable! There isn’t a moment to lose! Come as you are!” Hereupon, banging the receiver into its place with frenzied roughness, she ran halfway up the stairs to shout: “Egbert Floud! Egbert Floud! You march right down here this minute, sir!” From his room I heard an alarmed response, and a moment later knew that he had joined her. The door closed upon them, but high words reached me. Mostly the words of Mrs. Effie they were, though I could detect muffled retorts from the other. Wondering what this could portend, I noted from my window some ten minutes later the hurried arrival of the C. Belknap-Jacksons. The husband clenched a crumpled newspaper in one hand and both he and his wife betrayed signs to the trained eye of having performed hasty toilets for this early call.