“Good heaven!” gasped Bertha, “it is a burglar.”

But her sister set her mouth grimly and shook her head.  “We shall see,” she whispered.  “It may be something worse.”

Swiftly and furtively the man stood suddenly erect, and began to push the window slowly up.  Then he put one knee upon the sash, glanced round to see that all was safe, and climbed over into the room.  As he did so he had to push the blind aside.  Then the two spectators saw where the light came from.  Mrs. Westmacott was standing, as rigid as a statue, in the center of the room, with a lighted taper in her right hand.  For an instant they caught a glimpse of her stern face and her white collar.  Then the blind fell back into position, and the two figures disappeared from their view.

“Oh, that dreadful woman!” cried Monica.  “That dreadful, dreadful woman!  She was waiting for him.  You saw it with your own eyes, sister Bertha!”

“Hush, dear, hush and listen!” said her more charitable companion.  They pushed their own window up once more, and watched from behind the curtains.

For a long time all was silent within the house.  The light still stood motionless as though Mrs. Westmacott remained rigidly in the one position, while from time to time a shadow passed in front of it to show that her midnight visitor was pacing up and down in front of her.  Once they saw his outline clearly, with his hands outstretched as if in appeal or entreaty.  Then suddenly there was a dull sound, a cry, the noise of a fall, the taper was extinguished, and a dark figure fled in the moonlight, rushed across the garden, and vanished amid the shrubs at the farther side.

Then only did the two old ladies understand that they had looked on whilst a tragedy had been enacted.  “Help!” they cried, and “Help!” in their high, thin voices, timidly at first, but gathering volume as they went on, until the Wilderness rang with their shrieks.  Lights shone in all the windows opposite, chains rattled, bars were unshot, doors opened, and out rushed friends to the rescue.  Harold, with a stick; the Admiral, with his sword, his grey head and bare feet protruding from either end of a long brown ulster; finally, Doctor Walker, with a poker, all ran to the help of the Westmacotts.  Their door had been already opened, and they crowded tumultuously into the front room.

Charles Westmacott, white to his lips, was kneeling an the floor, supporting his aunt’s head upon his knee.  She lay outstretched, dressed in her ordinary clothes, the extinguished taper still grasped in her hand, no mark or wound upon her—­pale, placid, and senseless.

“Thank God you are come, Doctor,” said Charles, looking up.  “Do tell me how she is, and what I should do.”

Doctor Walker kneeled beside her, and passed his left hand over her head, while he grasped her pulse with the right.

“She has had a terrible blow,” said he.  “It must have been with some blunt weapon.  Here is the place behind the ear.  But she is a woman of extraordinary physical powers.  Her pulse is full and slow.  There is no stertor.  It is my belief that she is merely stunned, and that she is in no danger at all.”