“Cousin Elsie in love!” so he communed with himself upon his lonely pillow.  “In love with a Yankee schoolmaster!  What else can it be?  Let him look out for himself!  He’ll stand but a bad chance between us.  What makes you think she’s in love with him?  Met her walking with him.  Don’t like her looks and ways;—­she’s thinking about something, anyhow.  Where does she get those books she is reading so often?  Not out of our library, that’s certain.  If I could have ten minutes’ peep into her chamber now, I would find out where she got them, and what mischief she was up to.”

At that instant, as if some tributary demon had heard his wish, a shape which could be none but Elsie’s flitted through a gleam of moonlight into the shadow of the the trees.  She was setting out on one of her midnight rambles.

Dick felt his heart stir in its place, and presently his cheeks flushed with the old longing for an adventure.  It was not much to invade a young girl’s deserted chamber, but it would amuse a wakeful hour, and tell him some little matters he wanted to know.  The chamber he slept in was over the room which Elsie chiefly occupied at this season.  There was no great risk of his being seen or heard, if he ventured down-stairs to her apartment.

Mr. Richard Venner, in the pursuit of his interesting project, arose and lighted a lamp.  He wrapped himself in a dressing-gown and thrust his feet into a pair of cloth slippers.  He stole carefully down the stair, and arrived safely at the door of Elsie’s room.  The young lady had taken the natural precaution to leave it fastened, carrying the key with her, no doubt,—­unless, indeed, she had got out by the window, which was not far from the ground.  Dick could get in at this window easily enough, but he did not like the idea of leaving his footprints in the flower-bed just under it.  He returned to his own chamber, and held a council of war with himself.

He put his head out of his own window and looked at that beneath.  It was open.  He then went to one of his trunks, wich he unlocked, and began carefully removing its contents.  What these were we need not stop to mention,—­only remarking that there were dresses of various patterns, which might afford an agreeable series of changes, and in certain contingencies prove eminently useful.  After removing a few of these, he thrust his hand to the very bottom of the remaining pile and drew out a coiled strip of leather many yards in length, ending in a noose,—­a tough, well-seasoned lasso, looking as if it had seen service and was none the worse for it.  He uncoiled a few yards of this and fastened it to the knob of a door.  Then he threw the loose end out of the window so that it should hang by the open casement of Elsie’s room.  By this he let himself down opposite her window, and with a slight effort swung himself inside the room.  He lighted a match, found a candle, and, having lighted that, looked curiously about him, as Clodius might have done when he smuggled himself in among the Vestals.