At a vague hour in the evening a stout woman dressed in black, with a black apron, a neat violet cap on her head, and a small lamp in her podgy hand, unlocked one of the doors giving entry to the state rooms.  She was on her nightly round of inspection.  The autumn moon, nearly at full, had risen and was shining into the great windows.  And in front of the furthest window she perceived in the radiance of the moonshine a pyramidal group, somewhat in the style of a family of acrobats, dangerously arranged on the stage of a music-hall.  The base of the pyramid comprised two settees; upon these were several arm-chairs laid flat, and on the arm-chairs two tables covered with cushions and rugs; lastly, in the way of inanimate nature, two gilt chairs.  On the gilt chairs was something that unmistakably moved, and was fumbling with the top of the window.  Being a stout woman with a tranquil and sagacious mind, her first act was not to drop the lamp.  She courageously clung to the lamp.

“Who’s there?” said a voice from the apex of the pyramid.

Then a subsidence began, followed by a crash and a multitudinous splintering of glass.  The living form dropped on to one of the settees, rebounding like a football from its powerful springs.  There was a hole as big as a coffin in the window.  The living form collected itself, and then jumped wildly through that hole into the gardens.

Denry ran.  The moment had not struck him as a moment propitious for explanation.  In a flash he had seen the ridiculousness of endeavouring to convince a stout lady in black that he was a gentleman paying a call on the Countess.  He simply scrambled to his legs and ran.  He ran aimlessly in the darkness and sprawled over a hedge, after crossing various flower-beds.  Then he saw the sheen of the moon on Sneyd Lake, and he could take his bearings.  In winter all the Five Towns skate on Sneyd Lake if the ice will bear, and the geography of it was quite familiar to Denry.  He skirted its east bank, plunged into Great Shendon Wood, and emerged near Great Shendon Station, on the line from Stafford to Knype.  He inquired for the next train in the tones of innocency, and in half an hour was passing through Sneyd Station itself.  In another fifty minutes he was at home.  The clock showed ten-fifteen.  His mother’s cottage seemed amazingly small.  He said that he had been detained in Hanbridge on business, that he had had neither tea nor supper, and that he was hungry.  Next morning he could scarcely be sure that his visit to Sneyd Hall was not a dream.  In any event, it had been a complete failure.

V