He had another plan in his mind, of which more presently, and probably he would have pursued the idea which has just been mentioned no farther if his eye had not chanced to light at the moment on a small key hanging upon a nail by the fireplace. Clode looked at the key, and his face flushed. He stood thinking and apparently hesitating, the lamp throwing his features into strong relief, while a man might count twenty. Then he sat down with an angry exclamation and plunged into his work. But in less than a minute he lifted his head. His glance wandered again to the key; and, getting up suddenly, he took it down, put on his hat, and went out. His lodgings were over the stationer’s shop, but he could go in and out through a private passage. He saw, as he passed, however; that there was a light in the shop, and he opened the side door. “I am going to the rectory to consult a book, Mrs. Wafer,” he said, seeing his landlady dusting the counter. “You can leave my lamp alight. I shall want nothing more to-night, thank you.” She bade him good-night, and he closed the door again and rushed into the street. Crossing the top of the town, he had to pass the Market Hall, where he spoke to the one policeman on night duty; and here he saw that it was five minutes to ten, and hastened his steps, in the fear that the rector’s household might have retired. “He will not be home himself until eleven, at the earliest,” the curate muttered as he turned rapidly into the churchyard, which was very dark, the night being moonless. “I have a clear hour. It was well that I looked in late the other night.” But, whatever his design, it received a sudden check. The rectory was closed! The front of the house stood up dark and shapeless as the great church which towered in front of it. The servants had gone to bed, and, as they slept at the back, he would have found it difficult to arouse them, had it suited his plans to do so. As it was, he did not dream of such a thing, and with a slight shiver—for the night was cold, and now that his project no longer excited him he felt it so, and felt too the influence of the night wind soughing in sad fashion through the yews—he was turning away, when something arrested his attention, and he paused. The something he had seen, or fancied he had seen, was a momentary glimmer of light shining through the fanlight over the door. It could not affect him, for, if the servants had really closed the house for the night, even if they had not all gone to bed, he could scarcely go in. And yet some impulse led him to step softly into the porch and grope for the knocker. His hand lit instead on the iron-studded surface of the old oak door, and, to his surprise, he felt it move slightly under his touch. He pushed, and the door slid slowly and silently open, disclosing the dusky outline of the hall, faintly illuminated by a thin shaft of light which proceeded apparently from the study, the door of which was a trifle ajar.