And to all other precautions, Geoffrey added his own wakefulness, although toward morning weariness triumphed over excitement and he fell asleep. He was waked by an insistent knocking at his door, and he heard his name called by Cecilia. He sprang up and found her standing in the hall. She was wrapped in her sable coat, but shivering from cold or fear. “There is some one getting into the house. I heard a window open and steps on the piazza, below my room. What can it be?” Geoffrey flung himself past her. The instinct of the hunter joined to the obstinacy of his nature maddened him at the notion of McVay’s escape. On the opposite side of the house there was a piazza and on the roof of this a neighbouring window opened. He threw it back and climbed out. The snow had stopped, and the moon was shining, paling a little before the approaching dawn. Geoffrey could see a figure stealing quickly across the snow. There was no question of its identity. His revolver, which he had snatched from under his pillow and brought with him, he at once levelled on the vanishing form; his finger was on the trigger, when he felt a hand on his arm. Leaning out of the window behind him the girl caught his arm. “Don’t fire,” she said. “Don’t you see it is Billy?” There was a pause—the fraction of a second, but momentous, for Geoffrey realised that all his threats to McVay had been idle, that with that touch on his arm he could not shoot. Nevertheless he raised his voice and shouted thunderously: “McVay!” The figure turned, hesitated, saw, perhaps, the gleam of the moon on steel and began to retrace his steps. Steadily with the revolver still upon him he moved back to the house. Under the piazza he stopped and waved his hand. “I’m afraid they got away from us, Holland. I did my best.” “There _was_ a burglar then!” said the girl in the little whisper of recent fright. “By Heaven, he shall not trouble you,” returned Holland with more earnestness than seemed to be required. Then he left her and went down to meet McVay. “You were just about half a second ahead of a bullet,” he remarked, ushering him into the hall. To be caught and brought back is so ignominious a position that Geoffrey looked to see even McVay at a disadvantage, but looked in vain. The aspect worn was a particularly self-satisfied one. “I was aware I took a risk,” he answered; “I took it gladly for my sister’s sake.” “For your sister’s sake?” “Yes, and yours. Be honest, Holland, what could be so great a relief to you as to find I had disappeared. You are too narrow-minded, too honourable, you would say, to connive at it, but you would be delighted to know that you need not prosecute me.” “If I shot you, I should be saved the trouble of prosecuting.”