This ought to have quieted him for the night, but it did not. An indefinable suspicion, which he could not explain, made himuneasy. It was this, probably, that prompted him to go to the closet in which he knew that Nicholas Bundy kept a pistol. At times he placed the pistol under his pillow, but he had not done so to-night, considering it quite unnecessary in a quiet boarding-house.
"I don't suppose there's any need of it," thought Oliver; "but I'll take it and put it under my own pillow."
Nicholas Bundy was already asleep. He was a sound sleeper and did not observe what Oliver was doing, otherwise he would have asked an explanation.
This might have been hard to give, except the chance knowledge he had gained of Denton's character.
An hour passed and still Oliver remained awake. At about this time he heard a noise in the adjoining room as of someone moving about.
"It is Denton come home," he said to himself.
Presently the noise ceased, and Oliver concluded that his disreputable neighbor had gone to bed.
He began to be rather ashamed of his suspicions.
"Of course he can't get in here, since there is but one door, and that locked," he reflected. "It is foolish for me to lie awake all night. I may as well imitate Mr. Bundy's example and go to sleep."
Oliver was himself fatigued, having been about the streets all day, and now that his anxiety was relieved he, too, soon fell into a slumber. But his sleep was neither deep nor refreshing; it was troubled by dreams, or rather by one dream, in which Denton figured.