"More footsteps!--this time in the corridor. I slid out of bed, crept to the door, and pulled myself together. When the pitcher and basin came together with a clink, he would get it behind the ear--all at once--ker-chunk! He was so close now that I heard his fingers feeling around in the dark for the knob. A steady, gentle push with his hand near the key-hole, and he could then steal in without waking me. Whether he smelt me or not I do not know, for I made no sound--not even with my breath--but he came to a dead halt, backed away, rose to his feet and tiptoed down the corridor. "That settled all sleep for the night, and it was just as well, for the day was breaking--first the gray, pallid light, then the yellow, and then the rose tint. Nothing like a sunrise to put a fellow's ghosts to flight. So I picked up the basin and pitcher, unhooked my towel, had a wash, finished dressing, leaned out of the window for a while watching the rising sun warm up the little snow peaks one after another, and, shouldering my trap, started along the corridor and so on downstairs. "The pot-bellied lump of a scoundrel was waiting for me in the square room. He gave me the same keen, scrutinizing look with which he had welcomed me the night before. This time it began with my hair and ended at my boots, which were still muddy from the tramp of the previous evening. "'I am sorry, your Excellency,' he said, 'but if you had left your shoes outside your door I could have polished them; I was afraid of disturbing you or I should have hunted for them inside.'" Louis, as he finished, settled his big shoulders back in the chair until it creaked with his weight, and ran his eye around the table waiting for the explosion which he knew would follow. All we could do was to stare helplessly in his face. Le Blanc, who hadn't drawn a full breath since the painter began, found his voice first. "And he didn't intend cutting your throat?" he roared indignantly. "No, of course not--I never said he did. I said I was scared blue, and I was--real indigo. Oh!--an awful night--hardly got an hour's sleep." "But what about the fellow on the shed, and his footsteps, and the shadow of the hand?" demanded Brierley, wholly disappointed at the outcome of the yarn. "There was no fellow, Brierley, and no footsteps." This came in mild, gentle tones, as if the hunter's credulity were something surprising. "I thought you understood. It was the scraping of the dead tree against the roof of the shed that made the creaking noise; the hand was the shadow cast by the end of a bunched-up branch swaying in the wind. The same thing occurred the next night and on every moonlight night for a week after--as long as I stayed." "And what became of the soap-suddy brigand with the rosaries?" inquired The Engineer calmly, looking at Louis over the bowl of his pipe, a queer smile playing around his lips.