It will be seen from all this that Mr. Parsons was no common criminal, but he was a dangerous man for all that; for on his nocturnal expeditions he was in the habit of carrying an ugly sheath knife, not as a weapon of offence, be it remembered, but purely as a last resource for the protection of his own personal liberty. It was a fine summer afternoon, and Mr. Parsons was lounging through one of the better streets of St. John's Wood; that neighbourhood, sarcastically designated "the shady grove of the Evangelist," had peculiar attractions for Mr. Parsons; it is wealthy, the large houses stand mostly in their own grounds, and the big well-kept gardens offer favourable hiding-places to the midnight thief. Mr. Parsons lounged along, peacefully smoking a briar-root pipe; the houses where the paint was shabby or the gardens were ill-kept did not attract his attention; these signs were quite sufficient for him, and in his mind he put their owners down as "electro." Other houses which were guarded by dogs also failed to interest him, but Mr. Parsons took more than a passing glance at Azalea Lodge. Azalea Lodge stood back some twenty feet from the road way; the entire outside of the house was painted or grained; there was a great deal of gilding on the railings, a large gas lamp of the latest construction was fixed over each of the polished oak gates that formed the entrances to the little carriage-drive; the carriage-drive itself was asphalted, and clean as a new pin; the shrubs in the small front garden were expensive ones, and well pruned and trimmed; beyond the porch projected a rather elaborate glass structure set in ornamental iron work, and the centre of the well-whitened stone steps was covered with striped horsehair matting. Flowering shrubs in pots were ranged up these steps, while the sides of the porch proper were crammed with them. Elaborate floral decorations were on every window-ledge; not mere plants in pots, but great blocks of colour artfully arranged: scarlet geraniums and calceolarias with glossy-leaved fuchsias of many hues blazed in frames of blue lobelia, while dwarf ivies, nasturtiums and the pretty variegated periwinkle hung down in thick festoons, hiding the window sills. The beds in the front garden were made to show up in startling contrast to the closely-shaven turf by means of cocoanut fibre, into which potted flowering plants were plunged in reckless profusion. In one window of the drawing-room was a quasi-oriental _jardinière_ in which stood a large orchid covered with delicate blooms of mauve and yellow; in the next appeared the top of a parrot's cage of plated metal, on which sat a tame white cockatoo, who seemed to enjoy the splendour by which he was surrounded. The very linings of the curtains were of rich corded silk, and a half open window showed in the dim vista a distant vision of the heavy frames of numerous oil paintings. From top to bottom