"A lesson to me!" he muttered. "A dishonourable scoundrel! At Miss Deane's, too! I swear he has been trying to oust me, and the old lady has encouraged him. Anna told me of his words to her. One can't call a man out now; and if I spread it abroad about the cards there'll be no end of a row, and he'd be indignant. No, I won't speak. It's a lesson to me for being such an easy-going fool." He turned thoughtful now, but was ready to look up sharply as Jerry entered. "Want me any more 'smornin', sir?" "No, Brigley, no. You have heard no more news of poor Smithson?" "No, sir, not a word." "Strange how I have been thinking of him all the night." "So have I, sir. I went to sleep, too, out in the lobby, and I've just recollected, sir, I was dreaming all about him and wondering where he'd gone." "Ah, it's a bad business, Brigley. He ought to have known better. But we all do things we are sorry for sometimes and repent of them afterwards. There, be off to bed." "Shan't I clear up a bit, sir, first?" "No: that will do." Jerry went out of the room and shut the door after him--to stand looking back, as if he expected to be able to see through the panels everything that was going on. His brow was wrinkled up, his nostrils twitched, and his ears moved slightly, for he was listening intently; and a looker-on would have seen that he was intensely excited. For Jerry was thinking about cases he had read of in the papers, and, being somehow naturally prone to fancy people in trouble likely to make away with themselves by jumping into flooded rivers, he now took up the idea that the lieutenant, after a disastrous night of play, had some reason for desiring to get rid of him. "There's two double centre-fire breech-loaders in the case," he said to himself, "and there's his revolver and his sword, besides that old hunting-knife in the shark's-skin case--there's every temptation for a young man to do it. Oh, what a world this is! Why, that there Mark Frayne's been the cause of all the trouble, and driven S'Richard away-- blow him!--Dick Smithson. I won't think of him by that name. But if I went and did good to everybody by knocking Master Mark on the head, or holding him under water till he was full and wouldn't go any more, they'd try me for it, and then--Never mind: I won't think what. I haven't patience with such laws." Jerry stood listening, but all was very silent inside, and he grew more uneasy. "I won't go," he said to himself. "He means something, or he wouldn't have been in such a jolly hurry to get rid of me. Phew! how hot it is turned, and my hands and feet are like ice." He wiped his damp forehead, and stood gazing at the door, shaking his head mournfully, and with the dread of something wrong on the increase. But all was still, and even that Jerry looked upon as a bad omen.