I kept that watch upon the stairs until long after the house was quiet. I drew back into a recess once, when Murray Olivant and Dawkins went roaring up to their respective rooms; and again when presently Lucas Savell fumbled his trembling way up to his particular quarters. Even after that there was a great deal of noise for a time, because Dawkins and Olivant appeared to take a particular delight in shouting to each other from one room to the other as they undressed. But presently even they were quiet, and the dreary old house seemed to sink deeper and deeper into the shadows of the night. Keeping my lonely watch there, I dreamed of all that had happened in the years that were dead; thought chiefly, too, of my own utter helplessness now. I was to have been strong and purposeful; I was to have helped those who, like myself in an earlier time, were helpless; I laughed bitterly to think how weak I was, and how little I could do. I tried to tell myself what my years were, and how I ought to be strong and lusty; and then I remembered that my hair was grey, and my face shrunken and old, and my body weak. I had thought that I could cope with the powers of position and strength and riches; and I could do nothing. Thinking I heard a noise above, I determined at last that I would not go to bed yet; the girl seemed so absolutely alone in that great house. I knew the room in which she slept, and I presently crept up there, and lay down across her doorway, to snatch some sleep in that fashion. Even as I fell asleep I smiled to think that it might have been the old Barbara I was guarding, and not this new one, after all. I awoke with a light on my face, and the consciousness that some one was looking down at me. I started up in a sitting posture, only half awake, and saw that the door of the room was open, and that Barbara stood there, with a candle in her hand, bending over me. Our faces were very close together when she spoke in a surprised whisper-- "Tinman! What are you doing there?" "I did not mean that you should be disturbed," I said. "I only wanted to feel that you were safe." "Dear kind Tinman!" she whispered, as the tears gathered in her eyes. "I have not slept at all; I have lain awake--thinking. You moved in your sleep, I think, and brushed against the door, and I wondered what it was. Come inside a moment." She spoke in the faintest whisper, stopping every now and then to listen intently. I got slowly to my feet, and went just inside the door of the room; she closed the door, and stood there with the candle in her hand, looking at me. I remember that she looked very frail and young, with her hair falling about her shoulders. "What am I to do, Tinman?" she asked. I shook my head. "Indeed, I don't know," I replied. "Life is always so hard, and there are so many to make it harder for us. You did not quite trust me to-day when I spoke to you," I added regretfully, "or I might be able to speak to you more frankly."