I liked the fellow’s humility. He served me with a grave deference and an accustomed hand. Candles in crystal holders shed an agreeable light upon the table; the room was snug and comfortable, and hickory logs in a small fireplace crackled cheerily. If my grandfather had designed to punish me, with loneliness as his weapon, his shade, if it lurked near, must have been grievously disappointed. I had long been inured to my own society. I had often eaten my bread alone, and I found a pleasure in the quiet of the strange unknown house. There stole over me, too, the satisfaction that I was at last obeying a wish of my grandfather’s, that I was doing something he would have me do. I was touched by the traces everywhere of his interest in what was to him the art of arts; there was something quite fine in his devotion to it. The little refectory had its air of distinction, though it was without decoration. There had been, we always said in the family, something whimsical or even morbid in my grandsire’s devotion to architecture; but I felt that it had really appealed to something dignified and noble in his own mind and character, and a gentler mood than I had known in years possessed my heart. He had asked little of me, and I determined that in that little I would not fail. Bates gave me my coffee, put matches within reach and left the room. I drew out my cigarette case and was holding it half-opened, when the glass in the window back of me cracked sharply, a bullet whistled over my head, struck the opposite wall and fell, flattened and marred, on the table under my hand. CHAPTER IV A VOICE FROM THE LAKE I ran to the window and peered out into the night. The wood through which we had approached the house seemed to encompass it. The branches of a great tree brushed the panes. I was tugging at the fastening of the window when I became aware of Bates at my elbow. “Did something happen, sir?” His unbroken calm angered me. Some one had fired at me through a window and I had narrowly escaped being shot. I resented the unconcern with which this servant accepted the situation. “Nothing worth mentioning. Somebody tried to assassinate me, that’s all,” I said, in a voice that failed to be calmly ironical. I was still fumbling at the catch of the window. “Allow me, sir,”—and he threw up the sash with an ease that increased my irritation. I leaned out and tried to find some clue to my assailant. Bates opened another window and surveyed the dark landscape with me. “It was a shot from without, was it, sir?” “Of course it was; you didn’t suppose I shot at myself, did you?” He examined the broken pane and picked up the bullet from the table. “It’s a rifle-ball, I should say.” The bullet was half-flattened by its contact with the wall. It was a cartridge ball of large caliber and might have been fired from either rifle or pistol.