fathom the mystery, but the suspicion of something irregular deepened.
Her father could have no reason for injuring Sergeant Tom; but Pretty
Pierre--that was another matter. Yet she remembered too that her father
had appeared the more anxious of the two about the Sergeant's sleep. She
recalled that he said: "Yes, it's all right, if he doesn't sleep too
long."

But Pierre could play a part, she knew, and could involve others in
trouble, and escape himself. He was a man with a reputation for
occasional wickednesses of a naked, decided type. She knew that he was
possessed of a devil, of a very reserved devil, but liable to bold action
on occasions. She knew that he valued the chances of life or death no
more than he valued the thousand and one other chances of small
importance, which occur in daily experience. It was his creed that one
doesn't go till the game is done and all the cards are played. He had a
stoic indifference to events.

He might be capable of poisoning--poisoning! ah, that thought! of
poisoning Sergeant Tom for some cause. But her father? The two seemed
to act alike in the matter. Could her father approve of any harm
happening to Tom? She thought of the meal he had eaten, of the coffee
he had drunk. The coffee-was that the key? But she said to herself that
she was foolish, that her love had made her so. No, it could not be.

But a fear grew upon her, strive as she would against it. She waited
silently and watched, and twice or thrice made ineffectual efforts to
rouse him. Her father came in once. He showed anxiety; that was
unmistakable, but was it the anxiety of guilt of any kind? She said
nothing. At five o'clock matters abruptly came to a climax. Jen was in
the kitchen, but, hearing footsteps in the sitting-room, she opened the