It began to dawn on me, as I groped lower and lower down through the darkness, that a burglar's calling was not all beer and skittles. I began to feel a little ashamed of my heroics of an hour before. Then I drew up, suddenly, for a sound had crept to my ears. The tingle that ran through my body was not wholly one of fright. Yet, as I stood there in the darkness with one hand against the wall, I caught the rhythm of a slow and muffled snoring. There was something oddly reassuring in that reiterated vibration, even though it served to emphasize the dangers that surrounded me. It was not unlike the sound of a bell-buoy floating up to a fog-wrapped liner's bridge. I was no longer a prey to any feeling of hesitancy. I was already too deep in the woods to think of turning back. My one passion now was to complete the circuit, to emerge on the other side. I began to wonder, as I felt for the stair banister and groped my cautious way down the treads, just how the burglar himself had effected that final exit from the house. And the sooner I got away from the sleeping quarters, I felt, the safer I would be. Every bedroom was a shoal of dangers, and not all of them, I very well knew, would be equipped with the same generous whistling-buoy as that I had just left behind me. There was, too, something satisfying in the knowledge that I was at least getting nearer and nearer the ground-floor. This was due, not so much to the fact that I was approaching a part of the house with which I was more or less familiar, but more to the fact that my descent marked an approach to some possible pathway of escape. For that idea was now uppermost in my mind, and no aviator with a balky motor ever ached to get back to earth more eagerly than I. The utter darkness and silence of the lower halls were beginning to get on my nerves. I was glad to feel the newel-post, which assured me that I had reached the last step in my descent. I was relieved to be able to turn carefully and silently about to the left, to grope toward a door which I knew stood before me in the gloom, and then cautiously to turn the knob and step inside. I knew at once, even before I took the flashlight from my pocket, that I was in the library. And the room that opened off this, I remembered, half cabinet-lined study and half informal exhibition-room, was the chamber wherein Anthony Gubtill treasured his curios. It would take but a minute or two, I knew, to replace his priceless little porcelain. And another minute or two, I felt, ought to see me safely out and on my way home.