Wilton’s figure was a blur in the star-light as he stepped out into the walk and started furtively across the grounds.  His conduct greatly displeased The Hopper, as likely to interfere with the further carrying out of Muriel’s instructions.  The Lang-Yao jar was much too large to go into his pocket and not big enough to fit snugly under his arm, and as the walk was slippery he was beset by the fear that he might fall and smash this absurd thing that had caused so bitter an enmity between Shaver’s grandfathers.  The soft snow on the lawn gave him a surer footing and he crept after Wilton, who was carefully pursuing his way toward a house whose gables were faintly limned against the sky.  This, according to Muriel’s diagram, was the Talbot place.  The Hopper greatly mistrusted conditions he didn’t understand, and he was at a loss to account for Wilton’s strange actions.

[Illustration:  THE FAINT CLICK OF A LATCH MARKED THE PROWLER’S PROXIMITY TO A HEDGE]

He lost sight of him for several minutes, then the faint click of a latch marked the prowler’s proximity to a hedge that separated the two estates.  The Hopper crept forward, found a gate through which Wilton had entered his neighbor’s property, and stole after him.  Wilton had been swallowed up by the deep shadow of the house, but The Hopper was aware, from an occasional scraping of feet, that he was still moving forward.  He crawled over the snow until he reached a large tree whose boughs, sharply limned against the stars, brushed the eaves of the house.

The Hopper was aroused, tremendously aroused, by the unaccountable actions of Muriel’s father.  It flashed upon him that Wilton, in his deep hatred of his rival collector, was about to set fire to Talbot’s house, and incendiarism was a crime which The Hopper, with all his moral obliquity, greatly abhorred.

Several minutes passed, a period of anxious waiting, and then a sound reached him which, to his keen professional sense, seemed singularly like the forcing of a window.  The Hopper knew just how much pressure is necessary to the successful snapping back of a window catch, and Wilton had done the trick neatly and with a minimum amount of noise.  The window thus assaulted was not, he now determined, the French window suggested by Muriel, but one opening on a terrace which ran along the front of the house.  The Hopper heard the sash moving slowly in the frame.  He reached the steps, deposited the jar in a pile of snow, and was soon peering into a room where Wilton’s presence was advertised by the fitful flashing of his lamp in a far corner.

“He’s beat me to ut!” muttered The Hopper, realizing that Muriel’s father was indeed on burglary bent, his obvious purpose being to purloin, extract, and remove from its secret hiding-place the coveted plum-blossom vase.  Muriel, in her longing for a Christmas of peace and happiness, had not reckoned with her father’s passionate desire to possess the porcelain treasure—­a desire which could hardly fail to cause scandal, if it did not land him behind prison bars.