To this I could find no answer. It was not merely an errand, because the light remained. Minute after minute I sat there, until I heard a clock somewhere strike two, and still the light remained. I crept forward to the ventilator and peered through again. The shadows were moving backward and forward, just as they had been an hour before. There was something uncanny about them, and I shivered as I watched. It seemed to me that they were made by some person alternately rising and stooping, but why should any one do that for hours at a time? Some subtle association of ideas brought before my eyes the vision which had confronted Jean Valjean on that night when he had peered through the grated window into the Convent of Little Picpus--the dim light, the vast hall, the motionless figure on the floor before the cross. Was some such explanation to be sought here? Were these long-continued risings and stoopings a series of genuflexions before some shrine--a penance, perhaps, imposed for some transgression? The thought seemed absurd. But I could think of no other explanation of these singular motions. At last, weary with long staring, I went back to my seat beside the hedge and waited. Half an hour passed, then I saw the glimmer at the ventilator suddenly disappear, and a moment later, a light gleamed through the kitchen window. It went on toward the front of the house, and I saw the shadow of a woman's figure on the blind as it passed the window in front of me. Only one shadow--there was only one woman in the house, or, at least, only one awake and moving about. There had been only one in the cellar. My resolution was taken. I went straight forward to the door at the side of the house and knocked sharply. At the same instant, the light vanished. I waited a moment, then knocked again, more loudly. "Who's there?" called a voice, so harsh, so fierce, that it fairly startled me. "Open the door," I said. "I wish to see Miss Lawrence." "This is not Miss Lawrence's home," cried the voice. "I know it; but she's here." "She's not here!" and the voice rose to a scream. "Be off, or I'll fire through the door!" What sort of fury was this, I asked myself, and I stepped to one side to be out of range of a possible bullet. "Be off!" screamed the voice again. "I'll fire, I swear it! The law will justify me." There could be no question of that; it would be worse than folly to attempt to force an entrance with this fury opposing me, so I retreated again to the hedge and sat down to see what would happen. But nothing happened, and deciding at last that Miss Kingdon, or whoever it was had answered me, had gone to bed, I turned my steps toward the hotel just as the dawn was tingeing the east with grey. And one thing I determined on--I would purchase a revolver. Only a fool ventures unarmed into the tiger's den. CHAPTER XI An Old Acquaintance