“But his longing holds, and running up the little staircase to a second door, he unlocks this also and after another moment of hesitation pulls it open.  He has brought the bow with him, but he does not take it past the drapery hanging straight down before his eyes.  He simply drops it in the doorway and leaves it there within easy reach from the gallery if ever his impulse should be strong enough to lead him to make an attempt at striking a feather from the Indian headdress on the other side of the court.  You think him mad.  So do I, but dreams are filled with that kind of madness; and when I see him shut the door upon this bow, and steal back without relocking it or the one below, I have no other excuse than this to give in answer to your criticisms.”

“I do not criticise; I listen, Sweetwater.”

“You will criticise now.  As Bunyan says in his ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’:  ’I dreamed again!’ This time I saw the museum proper.  It was filled with visitors.  The morning of May twenty-second was a busy one, I am told, and a whole lot of people, singly and in groups, were continually passing up and down the marble steps and along the two galleries.  Partaking of the feelings of the one whose odd impulses I am endeavoring to describe, I was very uneasy and very restless until these crowds had thinned and most of the guests vanished from the building.  The hands of the clock were stealing toward twelve—­the hour of greatest quiet and fewest visitors.  As it reached the quarter mark, I saw what I was looking for, the man X reaching for one of those arrows hanging in the southern gallery, and slipping it inside his coat.—­Did you speak, sir?”

No, Mr. Gryce had not spoken; and Sweetwater, after an interval of uncertainty, went quietly on: 

“As I saw both of his hands quite free the next minute, I judge that something had been attached to the lining of that coat to hold the arrow by its feathered head.  But this is a deduction rather than a fact.”

He stopped abruptly.  An exclamation—­one of Mr. Gryce’s very own—­had left that gentleman’s lips, and Sweetwater felt that he must pause if only for an instant, to enjoy his small triumph.  But the delay was short.

“Go on,” said Mr. Gryce; and Sweetwater obeyed, but in lowered tones as though the vision he was describing was actually before his eyes.

“Next, I see a sweep of tapestry, and an eager, peering figure passing slowly across it.  It is that of the love-lorn Travis watching his inamorata tripping up the marble staircase and turning at its top in the direction of the opposite gallery.  His is a timid soul, and anxious as he is to watch her, he is not at all anxious to be detected in the act of doing so.  So he slips behind the huge pedestal towering near him, thus causing the whole gallery to appear empty to the eyes of X, now entering it at the other end.  This latter has come there with but one idea in his head—­to shoot an arrow across the court at the mark I have mentioned.  It may have been on a dare—­sometimes I think it was; but shoot it he means to, before a fresh crowd collects.