“I’ll show you,” said he, running into the garden.  After searching awhile in the dark, he found a ladder the gardener had left against a tree; after much straining, we carried the ladder to the house and set it up under one of the windows of the drawing-room.  Then we both clambered cautiously to the top and looked in.

The company were at cards, silent, save for a low remark now and again.  The little tables were ranged along by the windows, and it chanced that Mr. Harry Riddle sat so close to us that we could touch him.  On his right sat Mr. Darnley, the stout gentleman, and in the other seats two ladies.  Between Mr. Riddle and Mr. Darnley was a pile of silver and gold pieces.  There was not room for two of us in comfort at the top of the ladder, so I gave place to Nick, and sat on a lower rung.  Presently I saw him raise himself, reach in, and duck quickly.

“Feel that,” he whispered to me, chuckling and holding out his hand.

It was full of money.

“But that’s stealing, Nick,” I said, frightened.

“Of course I’ll give it back,” he whispered indignantly.

Instantly there came loud words and the scraping of chairs within the room, and a woman’s scream.  I heard Mr. Riddle’s voice say thickly, amid the silence that followed:—­

“Mr. Darnley, you’re a d—­d thief, sir.”

“You shall answer for this, when you are sober, sir,” said Mr. Darnley.

Then there came more scraping of chairs, all the company talking excitedly at once.  Nick and I scrambled to the ground, and we did the very worst thing we could possibly have done,—­we took the ladder away.

There was little sleep for me that night.  I had first of all besought Nick to go up into the drawing-room and give the money back.  But some strange obstinacy in him resisted.

“’Twill serve Harry well for what he did to-day,” said he.

My next thought was to find Mr. Mason, but he was gone up the river to visit a sick parishioner.  I had seen enough of the world to know that gentlemen fought for less than what had occurred in the drawing-room that evening.  And though I had neither love nor admiration for Mr. Riddle, and though the stout gentleman was no friend of mine, I cared not to see either of them killed for a prank.  But Nick would not listen to me, and went to sleep in the midst of my urgings.

“Davy,” said he, pinching me, “do you know what you are?”

“No,” said I.

“You’re a granny,” he said.  And that was the last word I could get out of him.  But I lay awake a long time, thinking.  Breed had whiled away for me one hot morning in Charlestown with an account of the gentry and their doings, many of which he related in an awed whisper that I could not understand.  They were wild doings indeed to me.  But strangest of all seemed the duels, conducted with a decorum and ceremony as rigorous as the law.

“Did you ever see a duel, Breed?” I had asked.