What he saw pleased him beyond measure.  His uncle was asleep on the sofa; on a small table at the head of the sofa a lamp was burning low, and by it stood the old man’s small cashbox, closed.  Near the box was a pile of bank notes and a piece of paper covered with figured in pencil.  The safe door was not open.  Evidently the sleeper had wearied himself with work upon his finances, and was taking a rest.

Tom set his candle on the stairs, and began to make his way toward the pile of notes, stooping low as he went.  When he was passing his uncle, the old man stirred in his sleep, and Tom stopped instantly—­stopped, and softly drew the knife from its sheath, with his heart thumping, and his eyes fastened upon his benefactor’s face.  After a moment or two he ventured forward again—­one step—­reached for his prize and seized it, dropping the knife sheath.  Then he felt the old man’s strong grip upon him, and a wild cry of “Help! help!” rang in his ear.  Without hesitation he drove the knife home—­and was free.  Some of the notes escaped from his left hand and fell in the blood on the floor.  He dropped the knife and snatched them up and started to fly; transferred them to his left hand, and seized the knife again, in his fright and confusion, but remembered himself and flung it from him, as being a dangerous witness to carry away with him.

He jumped for the stair-foot, and closed the door behind him; and as he snatched his candle and fled upward, the stillness of the night was broken by the sound of urgent footsteps approaching the house.  In another moment he was in his room, and the twins were standing aghast over the body of the murdered man!

Tom put on his coat, buttoned his hat under it, threw on his suit of girl’s clothes, dropped the veil, blew out his light, locked the room door by which he had just entered, taking the key, passed through his other door into the black hall, locked that door and kept the key, then worked his way along in the dark and descended the black stairs.  He was not expecting to meet anybody, for all interest was centered in the other part of the house now; his calculation proved correct.  By the time he was passing through the backyard, Mrs. Pratt, her servants, and a dozen half-dressed neighbors had joined the twins and the dead, and accessions were still arriving at the front door.

As Tom, quaking as with a palsy, passed out at the gate, three women came flying from the house on the opposite side of the lane.  They rushed by him and in at the gate, asking him what the trouble was there, but not waiting for an answer.  Tom said to himself, “Those old maids waited to dress—­they did the same thing the night Stevens’s house burned down next door.”  In a few minutes he was in the haunted house.  He lighted a candle and took off his girl-clothes.  There was blood on him all down his left side, and his right hand was red with the stains of the blood-soaked notes which he has crushed in it; but otherwise he was free