“Ferris was looking at the asp in the box this evening. Where is he now?” They found him lying quietly in bed and apparently asleep. The men shook him roughly. “He must be dead or he could not have slept through the uproar we have made,” they said. But at their rough handling he started, broad awake, sat up in bed, and gazed at them in a dull, dazed way. “What is it? Why have you wakened me? Has anything happened?” he stammered. Wilson took him firmly by the shoulder. “Yes, something has happened,” he said, sharply. “Ferris, you were looking at the asp in the box this evening. What did you do with it?” Ferris looked at him in wonder. “I did nothing with it. I was merely peering through the glass top at your dangerous pet, and I came away and left it under the great rock where you always keep it. Has it gotten away from you?” he asked. “Yes,” Wilson answered. “Well, I always told you it would, you know, and I am glad it has done so at last without harming any one, as I always had the most horrible fears that it would do.” “But the strangest part of it all was, that when it made its marvelous escape it carried my box with it,” said Wilson, drily. “No,” exclaimed Oswald Ferris. “Yes, and the strangest part of it yet was that the asp, box and all, went and hid under the pillow of Talbot Strangemore, your friend. And this same cunning serpent of old Nile cut a hole in the side of the box which he covered with thin paste-board in order to make his exit easy at the right moment.” In the brilliant moonlight that flooded the scene with radiance he saw the men’s faces gazing at him with dark threatening looks that made the blood run coldly through his veins. He gave a gasp and a shiver and tried to brave it out. “You are jesting with me, surely, and it is an unseemly hour for pleasantries,” he said, in a tone bristling with offense. “Have you wakened me from sleep at midnight to tell me this ridiculous tale?” Wilson gave him a glance of flashing contempt. The men crowded closely around him, casting scornful looks upon Ferris, while Wilson, who seemed to have constituted himself the spokesman, said, sarcastically: “Is there anything ridiculous in the fact that Strangemore found that horrible poisonous serpent coiled in his bed when he was about to retire?” “In his bed, oh, horrible! Then poor Strangemore must be dead,” Ferris exclaimed, in well simulated distress and horror, but with a wild throb of gladness and relief at his heart. No one said yea or nay at his words, but Wilson continued, sternly: “I am forced to believe that you, Ferris, placed that serpent in Strangemore’s bed with murderous intent, although you have pretended to be his friend. We have watched you two Americans, I and my comrades, and we know that you two are linked together by some mysterious bond, and that you mutually hate each other. Is it not so, my men?” “Aye! Aye! Aye!” rang shrilly on the hot sweltering air of the June night.