“Have the goodness to remember who you are, Mrs Milt. Leave the room!”
“And him going about in the dark watches of the night like a madman,” sighed Mrs Milt, as soon as she was alone. “If that wretch sees him, what will he think?”
“That wretch,” to wit, Cousin Thompson, was biting his nails in North’s library, and listening to a regular tramp upstairs.
“Strange thing,” he said, “but as soon as a man’s head is touched, he grows more and more like a four-footed beast.”
He smiled and listened. All was very still now, and he set to work searching drawers and the bureau for material that might be useful to him in the settlement of Horace North’s affairs, and as he searched he talked to himself.
“Let me see: it was Nebuchadnezzar—wasn’t it?—who used to go about on hands and knees eating grass.”
He examined a document or two, but did not seem satisfied with the result.
“Hah! poor Horace!” he said. “I’m very sorry for him, but I must do my duty to society, and to him as well.”
He started, for the door-handle had been touched, and, quick as lightning, he dropped the papers he held, and blew down the chimney of the lamp.
The door cracked, and as it opened slightly he could hear the church clock chiming, and then a deep-toned one boomed forth.