on my apron to begin work when I heard someone enter the lobby. Then
came a gentle tapping at the door of the laboratory. I took no notice,
but waited to see what would happen. The tapping was repeated louder and
yet louder, and still I made no move. Then, after an interval, I heard a
wire inserted in the lock.

"I determined to make an end of this. Quietly concealing the material on
which I was working, I took down from a hook a large butterfly-net (my
poor wife had been interested in Lepidoptera). Very softly I tiptoed to
the door and suddenly flung it open. There stood Susan Slodger with a
hair-pin in her hand, absolutely paralyzed with terror. In a moment,
before she had time to recover, I had slipped the butterfly-net over her
head.

"That revived her. With a piercing yell she turned and fled, and with
such precipitancy that she pulled the net off the handle. I saw her
flying down the lobby with the net over her head, looking like an
oriental bride; I heard the street door bang, and I found the butter-fly
net on the doormat. But Susan Slodger I never set eyes on again.

"The cook left me the same day, taking Susan's box with her. It was a
great relief. I now had the house to myself and could work without
interruption or the discomfort of being spied upon. As to the products
of my labors, they are fully set forth in the catalogue; and of this
adventure I can only say to the visitor to my museum in the words of the
well-known inscription, '_Si monumentum requiris, Circumspice?_'"

Such was Challoner's account of his acquisition of the specimens
numbered 2, 3 and 4. The descriptions of the preparations were, as he
had said, set out in dry and precise detail in the catalogue, and some