Harney threw down his paper and followed him across the hall. It was evident that he was sober, and beyond this some new sense of importance and power had taken from his manner its old deprecation. They were equals now, pals and partners. The drunken typesetter and one-time thief was still under Barry Essex’s thumb, but he was also deep in his confidence. He sat down in his old seat by the fire, his eyes on Essex. “What’s up?” he said; “what work have you got for me such a night as this?” “Big work, and with big money behind it,” said the younger man; “and when it’s done we each get our share and go our ways, George Harney.” He drew his chair to the other side of the fire and began to talk--his voice low and quiet at first, growing urgent and authoritative, as Harney shrank before the dangers of the work expected of him. The moments ticked by, the fire growing hotter and brighter, the roaring of the storm sounding above the voices of the master and his tool. The night was half spent before Harney was conquered and instructed. Then the men, waiting for the hour of deepest sleep and darkness, continued to sit, occasionally speaking, the light of the leaping flames catching and losing their anxious faces as the firelight in another room was touching the face of the sleeping girl of whom they talked. It was nearly three when a movement of life stirred the blackness of the Garcia garden. The rushing of the rain beat down all sound; in the moist soddenness of the earth no trace lingered. The pepper-tree bent and cracked to the gusts as it did to the additional weight of the creeping figure in its boughs. This was merely a shapeless bulk of blackness amid the fine and broken blackness of the swaying foliage. It stole forward with noiseless caution, though it might have shouted and all sound been lost in the angry turmoil of the night. Creeping upward along the great limb that stretched to the balcony roof, a perpendicular knife-edge of light that gleamed from between the curtains of a window, now and then crossed its face, sometimes dividing it clearly in two, sometimes illuminating one attentive eye, a small shining point of life in the dead murk around it, one eye, aglow with purpose, gleaming startlingly from blackness. The loud drumming of the rain on the balcony roof drowned the crackle of the tin under a feeling foot. To slide there from the limb only occupied a moment. The branch had grown well up over the roof, grating now and then against it when the wind was high. The thin streak of light from between the curtains made the man wary. Why was she burning a light at this hour unless she was sleepless and up?