Slipping through the darkness of the night, with whose shadows he seemed to melt and mingle, as though he were but another one of them, he moved quickly in the direction of these cautious footsteps he had listened to.

They had ceased now, and the silence was profound, for those faint multitudinous noises of the night that murmur without ceasing in the woods and fields are less noticeable near the habitations of men.

A little puzzled, Dunn paused to listen again and once more crept forward a careful yard or two, and then lay still, feeling it would not be safe to venture further till he was more sure of his direction, and till some fresh sound to guide him reached his ears.

He had not long to wait, for very soon, from quite close by, he heard something that surprised and perplexed him equally—­a deep, long-drawn sigh.

Again he heard it, and in utter wonder asked himself who this could be who came into another person’s garden late at night to stand and sigh, and what such a proceeding could mean.

Once more he heard the sigh, deeper even than before, and then after it a low murmur in which at first he could distinguish nothing, but then caught the name of Ella being whispered over and over again.

He bent forward, more and more puzzled, trying in vain to make out something in the darkness, and then from under a tree, whose shadow had hitherto been a complete concealment, there moved forward a form so tall and bulky there could be little doubt whom it belonged to.

“John Clive—­what on earth—!” Dunn muttered, his bewilderment increasing, and the next moment he understood and had some difficulty in preventing himself from bursting out laughing as there reached him the unmistakable sound of a kiss lightly blown through the air.

Clive was sending a kiss through the night towards Ella’s room and his nocturnal visit was nothing more than the whim of a love-sick youth.

With Dunn, his first amusement gave way almost at once to an extreme annoyance.

For, in the first place, these proceedings seemed to him exceedingly impertinent, for what possible right did Clive imagine he had to come playing the fool like this, sighing in the dark and blowing kisses like a baby to its mammy?

And secondly, unless he were greatly mistaken, John Clive might just as sensibly and safely have dropped overboard from a ship in mid-Atlantic for a swim as come to indulge his sentimentalities in the Bittermeads garden at night.

“You silly ass!” he said in a voice that was very low, but very distinct and very full of an extreme disgust and anger.

Clive fairly leaped in the air with his surprise, and turned and made a sudden dash at the spot whence Dunn’s voice had come, but where Dunn no longer was.

“What the blazes—?” he began, spluttering in ineffectual rage.  “You—­you—!”

“You silly ass!” Dunn repeated, no less emphatically than before.