stilled their swaying with a touch, and stepped back into the
room. For a moment he caught the eye of the fellow on the floor;
and it was upturned to his, sardonically intelligent. But the lord
of the manor had little time to debate consequences.

Abruptly the door was flung wide and a short stout man, clutching
up his trousers with a frantic hand, burst into the library,
brandishing overhead a rampant revolver.

"'Ands hup!" he cried, leveling at Maitland. And then, with a
fallen countenance; "G-r-r-reat 'eavins, sir! _You_, Mister
Maitland, sir!"

"Ah, Higgins," his employer greeted the butler blandly.

Higgins pulled up, thunderstruck, panting and perspiring with
agitation. His fat cheeks quivered like the wattles of a gobbler,
and his eyes bulged as, by degrees, he became alive to the
situation.

Maitland began to explain, forestalling the embarrassments of
cross-examination.

"By the merest accident, Higgins, I was passing in my car with a
party of friends. Just for a joke I thought I'd steal up to the
house and see how you were behaving yourselves. By chance--again--
I happened to see this light through the library windows." And
Maitland, putting an incautious hand upon the bull's-eye on the
desk, withdrew it instantly, with an exclamation of annoyance and
four scorched fingers.