one of these chairs Mr. Jenkins-Smith sank with a sigh of content.  Then he lighted his pipe, stretched out his short legs, and, gazing at his beautifully trimmed garden, prepared to enjoy a delicious hour of well-earned repose.  Things were going well with him; money was easy; his health was good; when he sat down in the wicker chair and put his pipe into his mouth he was, perhaps, as happy a man as you could find in all Surbiton.

But presently, in fact very soon, he became conscious of a disagreeable feeling.  A curious depression began to come upon him.  He smoked steadily, he gazed out at his garden green with turf and gay with flowers, but his interest and pleasure in it were gone from him.  He wondered why.  Presently he turned his head and looked over his shoulder.  What he was looking for he did not know; simply he felt obliged to do what he did.  He saw, of course, nothing but the curved wooden back of the tea-house.  He listened, he strained his ears, but he heard nothing except the faint “ting-ting” of a tram-bell, and voices of some children playing in a distant garden.  His pipe had gone out.  As he lit a match and held it to his pipe bowl he saw that his hand was shaking.  Whatever had come to him?  He was no drinker; he had always been a temperate man, proud of his clear eyes and steady limbs, yet now he was shaking like a drunkard.  Perspiration burst out upon his forehead.  He was seized by an intense desire to get away from the tea-house, to get out into the open, and he half rose from his chair, holding on to the arms and dropping his pipe on the wooden floor.  The tiny noise it made set his nerves in a turmoil.  He was afraid.  But of what?  He took his hands from the chair and sat back, angry with himself, almost ashamed.  That he should feel afraid, here in his own garden, in his own cozy tea-house!  It was absurd, monstrous; it was like a sort of madness come upon him.  But he was determined not to give way to such nonsense.  Just because he was longing to go out of the tea-house he would remain in it.  Let the darkness come; he did not mind it; he was going to smoke his pipe.

Again he stared over his shoulder, and the sweat ran down his face.  Had not he heard something in the tea-house of his neighbor on the other side of the wall?  It seemed to him that he had rather felt a sound than actually heard it.  Nausea came upon him.  He got up trembling.  But still he was ashamed of himself, and he would not go out of the tea-house.  Instead he went behind the table, stood close to the wooden wall, put his ear to it and listened intently.  He heard nothing; but when he was standing against the wall his horror and fear increased until he could no longer combat them.  He turned sharply, knocked over a chair, and hurried out into the garden.  There for a moment he stood still.  Under the sky he felt better, but not himself; he did not feel himself at all.  After a pause for consideration he put on his jacket,—­he had been gardening in his