The window had been raised, the blind and curtains pushed away, and a man's head and shoulders thrust inside. When Ella's exclamation called their attention to the intruder's presence, they stared at him, as well they might, for a moment or two with stupefied amazement; the impudence of the act seemed almost to surpass the bounds of credibility. He, on his part, met their gaze with a degree of fortitude, not to say assurance, which was more than a little surprising. To the fellow's character his looks bore evidence. The buttoning of his coat up to his chin failed to conceal the fact that his neck was bare, while the crushing of a dilapidated billycock down over his eyes served to throw into clearer relief his unshaven cheeks and hungry-looking eyes. For the space of perhaps thirty seconds they looked at him, and he at them, in silence. Then Jack moved hastily forward. "You're a cool hand!" he cried. But Madge caught him by the arm. "Don't!" she said. "This is the man who stared through the window." Jack turned to her, bewildered. "The man who stared through the window? What on earth do you mean?" "Don't!" she repeated. "I think that Mr. Graham knows this man." The man himself endorsed her supposition. "Yes, I'm rather inclined to think that Mr. Graham does." His voice was not a disagreeable one; not at all the sort of voice which one would have expected from a person of his appearance. He spoke, too, like an educated man, with, however, a strenuous something in his tone which suggested, in some occult fashion, the bitterness of a wild despair. Seeing that he remained unanswered, he spoke again. "What's more, if there is a cool hand it's Mr. Graham, it isn't me. I am a poor, starving, police-ridden devil, being hounded to hell, full pelt, by a hundred other devils--but, Bruce Graham, what are you?" They turned to the man who was thus addressed. At the moment of interruption he had been levering a strip of wainscot from its place with the aid of the inserted chisel. He still kept one hand upon the handle, holding the hammer with the other, while he drew his body back against the wall as close as it would go, and, with pallid cheeks and startled eyes, he stared at the intruder as if he had been some straggler from the spiritual world. From between his lips, which seemed to tremble, there came a single word-- "Ballingall!" "Yes, Ballingall! That's my name. And what's yours--cur, hound, thief? By God! there have been people I've used badly enough in my time, but none worse than you've used me." "You are mistaken." "Am I? It looks like it. What are you doing here?" "You know what I'm doing." "By God! I do--you're right there. And it's because you know I know, that, although you're twice my size, and have got all the respectability and law of England at your back, you stand there shivering and shaking, afraid for your life at the sight of me." "I am not afraid of you. I repeat that you are mistaken."