"I was awake," she clarioned through the keyhole, speaking much faster than any one following this narrative can possibly hope to read the words. "I couldn't sleep. I never do sleep well when I'm in a strange house. And anyhow, I was all alone. My nephew by marriage--Mr. Edward Braydon, you know--had gone out with the gentleman who lives on the floor above to play cards, and he said he was going to be gone nearly all night, and my niece--I'm Mrs. Braydon's unmarried aunt from Poughkeepsie and I'm down here visiting them--my niece was called to Long Island yesterday by illness--it's her sister who's ill with something like the bronchitis. And he was gone and so she was gone, and so here I was all alone and he told me not to stay up for him, but I couldn't sleep well--I never can sleep in a strange house--and just a few minutes ago I heard the bell ring and I supposed he had forgotten to take his latchkey with him, and so I got up to let him in. And I called down the stairs and asked him if it was him and he answered back. But it didn't sound like his voice. But I didn't think anything of that. But, of course, it was out of the ordinary for him to have a voice like that. But all the same I went back to bed. But he didn't come in and I was just getting up again to see what detained him--his voice really sounded so strange I thought then he might have been taken sick or something. But just as I got to the door a plank creaked and I opened the door and there it was right where I could have touched him. And then it ran--and oh, what if----" "I'm astin' you once more what it was like?" "How should I know except that----" "Was it a big, fat, wild, bare-headed, scary, awful-lookin' scoundrel dressed in some kind of funny pink clothes?" "Yes, that's it! That's him--he was all sort of pink. Oh, did you see him too? Oh, is it a burglar?" "Burglar nothin'! It's a ravin', rampagin' lunatic--that's what it is!" "Oh, my heavens, a lunatic!" "Sure it is. He tried to git me to let him in and----" "Oh, whatever shall we do!" XIII "Hey, what's all the excitement about?" A new and deeper voice here broke into the babel, and Mr. Leary recognising it at a distance, where he stood listening--but not failing, even while he listened, to strive unavailingly with his problem of buttons--knew he was saved. Knowing this he nevertheless retreated still deeper into the inner room. The thought of spectators in numbers remained very abhorrent to him. So he did not hear all that happened next, except in broken snatches.