“Well,” said Miss Gregory, when she had completed an examination of the apartment, “there doesn’t seem to be much more one can do.  They’ll come back, I suppose?  But of course they will.  How much money have you got about you?”

“About two thousand pounds, ma’am,” he said, meekly.

“H’m!” Miss Gregory thought a moment.  “And they know it?  Of course.”  She added her little sharp nod of certainty.  “Well, when they come we’ll attend to them.”

There was a tiny mirror hanging from a nail, and she went to it, patted her grey hair to neatness, and re-established her felt hat on top of it.  The place was as still as the grave; no noise reached it from without.  The one candle at the bedside threw her shadow monstrously up the wall; while she fumbled with her hatpins it pictured a looming giantess brandishing weapons.

She was still at the mirror, with hatpins held in her mouth, when the steps of the robbers made themselves heard.  The man on the bed started up on his elbow, with wide eyes and a sagging mouth.  Miss Gregory quelled him with a glance, then crossed the floor and blew the candle out.  In the darkness she laid her hat down that it might not come to harm, and put a reassuring hand on the youth’s shoulder, it was quaking, and she murmured him a caution to keep quiet.  Together, with breath withheld, they heard the men in the entry of the house, three of them, coming guardedly.  Miss Gregory realized that this was the real onslaught; they would be nerved for shrieks this time.  She took her hand from the youth’s shoulder with another whispered word, and stepped to the middle of the room and stood motionless.  The noise of breathing reached her, then a foot shuffled, and on the instant somebody sprang forward and shoved the door wide.

The jug and basin smashed splendidly; whoever it fell on uttered a little shrill yell and paused, confounded by the darkness.  Miss Gregory, her eyes more tuned to it, could make out the blur of white clothes; with noiseless feet she moved towards them.  She was all purpose and directness; no tremor disturbed her.  As calmly as she would have shaken hands with the Consul she reached forward, felt her enemy, and delivered a cool and well-directed thrust.  An appalling yell answered her, and she stepped back a space, the hatpin held ready for another attack.  There was a tense instant of inaction, and then the three rushed, and one bowled her over on the floor and fell with her.

Miss Gregory fell on her side, and before she was well down the steel hatpin, eight inches long of good Paris metal, plunged and found its prey.  The man roared and wallowed clear, and she rose.  The big room was wild with stamping feet and throaty noises such as dogs make.  The bedside chair, kicked aside struck her ankles; she picked it up and threw it at the sounds.  It seemed to complicate matters.  The place was as dark as a well, and she moved groping with her hands towards the bed.  Some one backed into her—­another yell and a jump, and, as she stepped back, the swish of a blow aimed towards her that barely missed her.  Then she was by the bed, feeling over it; it was empty.