Tap, tap, tap! The man with the hammer was examining the farther side of the gate, and very likely he would carry his investigations beyond it. I drew up my legs and crouched in the shadow of the pillar, revolver in hand. I was not anxious for an encounter; I much preferred to wait for a disclosure of the purpose that lay behind this mysterious tapping upon walls on my grandfather’s estate. But the matter was taken out of my own hands before I had a chance to debate it. The man dropped to the ground, sounded the stone base under the gate, likewise the pillars, evidently without results, struck a spiteful crack upon the iron bars, then stood up abruptly and looked me straight in the eyes. It was Morgan, the caretaker of the summer colony. “Good evening, Mr. Morgan,” I said, settling the revolver into my hand. There was no doubt about his surprise; he fell back, staring at me hard, and instinctively drawing the hammer over his shoulder as though to fling it at me. “Just stay where you are a moment, Morgan,” I said pleasantly, and dropped to a sitting position on the wall for greater ease in talking to him. He stood sullenly, the hammer dangling at arm’s length, while my revolver covered his head. “Now, if you please, I’d like to know what you mean by prowling about here and rummaging my house!” “Oh, it’s you, is it, Mr. Glenarm? Well, you certainly gave me a bad scare.” His air was one of relief and his teeth showed pleasantly through his beard. “It certainly is I. But you haven’t answered my question. What were you doing in my house to-day?” He smiled again, shaking his head. “You’re really fooling, Mr. Glenarm. I wasn’t in your house to-day; I never was in it in my life!” His white teeth gleamed in his light beard; his hat was pushed back from his forehead so that I saw his eyes, and he wore unmistakably the air of a man whose conscience is perfectly clear. I was confident that he lied, but without appealing to Bates I was not prepared to prove it. “But you can’t deny that you’re on my grounds now, can you?” I had dropped the revolver to my knee, but I raised it again. “Certainly not, Mr. Glenarm. If you’ll allow me to explain—” “That’s precisely what I want you to do.” “Well, it may seem strange,”—he laughed, and I felt the least bit foolish to be pointing a pistol at the head of a fellow of so amiable a spirit. “Hurry,” I commanded. “Well, as I was saying, it may seem strange; but I was just examining the wall to determine the character of the work. One of the cottagers on the lake left me with the job of building a fence on his place, and I’ve been expecting to come over to look at this all fall. You see, Mr. Glenarm, your honored grandfather was a master in such matters, as you may know, and I didn’t see any harm in getting the benefit—to put it so—of his experience.”