from the front during the hot summer weather, in consequence of the shut-up condition of all the windows thereabouts.  In the fourth place, hard by the coach-house in which Doctor Dulcifer’s neat gig was put up, there was a tool-shed, in which the gardener kept his short pruning-ladder.  In the fifth and last place, outside the stable in which Doctor Dulcifer’s blood mare lived in luxurious solitude, was a dog-kennel with a large mastiff chained to it night and day.  If I could only rid myself of the dog—­a gaunt, half-starved brute, made savage and mangy by perpetual confinement—­I did not see any reason to despair of getting in undiscovered at one of the second-floor windows—­provided I waited until a sufficiently late hour, and succeeded in scaling the garden wall at the back of the house.

Life without Alicia being not worth having, I determined to risk the thing that very night.

Going back at once to the town of Barkingham, I provided myself with a short bit of rope, a little bull’s-eye lantern, a small screwdriver, and a nice bit of beef chemically adapted for the soothing of troublesome dogs.  I then dressed, disposed of these things neatly in my coat pockets, and went to the doctor’s to dinner.  In one respect, Fortune favored my audacity.  It was the sultriest day of the whole season—­surely they could not think of shutting up the second-floor back windows to-night!

Alicia was pale and silent.  The lovely brown eyes, when they looked at me, said as plainly as in words, “We have been crying a great deal, Frank, since we saw you last.”  The little white fingers gave mine a significant squeeze—­and that was all the reference that passed between us to what happened in the morning.  She sat through the dinner bravely; but, when the dessert came, left us for the night, with a few shy, hurried words about the excessive heat of the weather being too much for her.  I rose to open the door, and exchanged a last meaning look with her, as she bowed and went by me.  Little did I think that I should have to live upon nothing but the remembrance of that look for many weary days that were yet to come.

The doctor was in excellent spirits, and almost oppressively hospitable.  We sat sociably chatting over our claret till past eight o’clock.  Then my host turned to his desk to write a letter before the post want out; and I strolled away to smoke a cigar in the garden.

Second-floor back windows all open, atmosphere as sultry as ever, gardener’s pruning-ladder quite safe in the tool-shed, savage mastiff in his kennel crunching his bones for supper.  Good.  The dog will not be visited again tonight:  I may throw my medicated bit of beef at once into his kennel.  I acted on the idea immediately; the dog seized his piece of beef; I heard a snap, a wheeze, a choke, and a groan—­and there was the mastiff disposed of, inside the kennel, where nobody could find out that he was dead till the time came for feeding him the next morning.