"Upon my word!" I thought with indignation. The young man could not possibly be in his right mind. The study door was closed, but through the slightest of chinks between door and lintel, left evidently to obviate the noise of the clicking fixture, I perceived a faint, fitful spot of light flickering about, like the light of Tinker Bell in "Peter Pan." With a slight pressure I pushed the door gently ajar. Randolph, with a small spotlight in his hand, was standing at my desk. Except for the circle of light about him the room was in darkness. The rim of his hat shading his eyes, he was scanning the Salmon Oil certificates; with his trembling left hand he was counting them, under the quivering spot of light proceeding from his right. "Eight—nine—ten!" I heard him breathe heavily. "A hundred each!" I stood stock-still, overwhelmed, scarcely breathing, frozen with a sickening shame of horror. The meaning of it was so crushingly plain! "Take two of them!" I heard a mysterious hoarse whisper coming from the window. "Put the rest back. He’ll never miss ’em." "All right," whispered Randolph, with quaking huskiness. "Give ’em to me!" came from the window. My power of motion at that instant suddenly flooded back into my muscles. I lifted my hand as though fearful of rending the darkness, pushed the switch-button inside the door and the room was bathed in light from the single lamp on my table—intense after the pregnant darkness. Then a vision that sent a chill shock through my nerves and stunned all senses left me gaping—petrified. In the window was framed the abhorrent, dilapidated parody of the face of Pendleton! It could not be! was the thought sluggishly struggling through my numbed brain. It was a nightmare. Then a sudden sharp cry threw me into a momentary tremor. I wheeled about. Alicia, fully dressed, with one hand to her eyes, was leaning against the doorpost! Without speaking, I automatically bounded forward to the window. The muffled sound of heavy steps running on the turf fell upon my ears and dimly, through the starlit darkness, I caught a glimpse of the stooping bulk of a large man receding down the slope, toward the brook. Had my senses been tricking me or had I really seen the face of Pendleton? "Who was it?" I cried fiercely to Randolph, still hanging stupefied and immobile, with blank terror upon his features, over my desk. He made no answer. "Sit down over there!" I commanded sharply. As one under the influence of a drug or a hypnotic spell, the boy loosely moved to obey, but remained standing irresolute at my chair, a mass of helplessness, his head dropping limply on his chest. Anger and pain struggling for mastery within me, I turned abruptly to Alicia. "Haven’t you been asleep, child? Better go upstairs—please go," I entreated. "No, I won’t!" she retorted with a cry of passionate vehemence and with a rush she flung past me toward Randolph.