Faint moonlight is not good for observing colour. Pink looks black by this illumination, whether it is on a man’s nose or forms the tinting of his old hunting-coat. But even faint moonlight delineates well the shape of an old round-topped black velvet cap, and makes it look far blacker than it does by day.
Such a cap is admirable for riding purposes, and must be of a most convenient shape for anyone operating in a very tradesmanlike way upon the drawing-room window by which the figure stood, with a putty-knife, though an observer would probably have thought the hour unseasonable.
Still, when a window has been broken upon the ground floor, people in the country are only too glad to get the repairing done at any time that the glazier thinks proper to work, so that the weak spot in the domestic defences may as soon as possible be repaired.
But in this case the stout plate glass window was not broken, and the peculiarly handy knife being used was not called upon to spread putty, but was being inserted cleverly away from the glass and causing a clicking noise, thus showing, in connection with a wonderful degree of elasticity, that it was dealing with metal.
While its owner was at his busiest another noise arose, something between a whine and a squeak, the effect of which was to make the operator leave off his task, take two or three steps, and kneel down beneath a bush, to whisper words to something alive connected with its liver—words which produced silence—and return to the window.
The faint clicking began again, and the extremely thin putty-knife did its work in the skilled hands so well that in a very short time the doorlike window yielded and uttered a ghost of a groan as it turned upon its hinges.
“Poor thing, then! Did ’um disturb it in the middle of the night?” said the tradesman to himself, stepping softly in. “Just like ’em! Plenty to eat, plenty to drink, plenty o’ soft beds to sleep in, and too lazy to hyle a hinge. When I keep servants I’ll—Here, let’s just shut you.”
He carefully closed the window, before standing listening for a few moments and looking about till his eyes rested upon a softly-quilted couch, half-covered with a satin-lined Polar bearskin, bathed, as a poet would say, in the lambent rays of the moon, which in this instance came through the conservatory.
Towards this the man stepped in the dark, and, to his intense disgust, kicked heavily against a hassock.
The words he uttered were unprintable, save the latter portion, which were something about the tradesman’s “wussest corn.” The next minute it appeared as if he was about to examine the damage done, for his figure blotted out a portion of the sofa’s shape, and it, too, was bathed in the lambent light, as he busily unlaced and drew off, not only one, but two extremely big, ugly hunting boots, with star-like cuts in them, evidently to ease the “wussest” and other corns.