CHAPTER XLIV
SOME ACCOUNT OF A HIGHWAYMAN
Mr. Dalroyd was a man of habit and of late it had become his custom to take particular heed as to the lock and bolts of his chamber door of nights and to sleep with his pistol beneath his pillow.
He had formed another habit also, a strange, uncanny habit of pausing suddenly with head aslant like one hearkening for soft or distant sounds; though to be sure his eyes were as sleepy and himself as languid as usual.
But the stair leading to Mr. Dalroyd's bedchamber was narrow and extremely precipitous and, descending in the gloom one evening, he had tripped over some obstacle and only by his swordsman's quickness and bodily agility saved himself from plunging headlong to the bottom. He had wakened in the middle of the night for no seeming reason and, sitting up in that attitude of patient listening, had chanced to glance at the door lit by a shaft of moonlight and had watched the latch quiver, lift silently and as silently sink back in place.
He had moreover become cautious as to how he took up his pistols, having found them more than once mysteriously at full cock. So Mr. Dalroyd continued to lock and double-lock his door at night and, in the morning, seated before his mirror, to watch Joseph the obsequious therein: as he was doing now.
"Sir," said Joseph, eyes lowered yet perfectly aware of his master's watchful scrutiny, "everything is packed save your brushes and the gillyflower water."
"Why then, my snail, you may pack them also."
"I will, sir."