He took the newspaper off the bundle then, and I saw it was wrapped with a lavender ribbon.  I sat down and gazed at him, fascinated.  He was the saddest-eyed piece of remorse I’d seen for a long time.

“And when you’ve got your breath back, Minnie,” he said feebly, “and your strength, would you mind taking the floor mop and hitting me a few cracks?  Only not on the right leg, Minnie—­not on the right leg.  I landed on it last night; it’s twisted like a pretzel.”

“Don’t stand and stare,” he continued irritably, when I didn’t make a move, “at least get that—­that infernal black garment out of sight.  Cover it with the newspaper.  And if you don’t believe that a sweet-faced young girl like my wife has a positive talent for wickedness and suspicion, go out to the shelter-house this morning.”

“So it was you!” I gasped, putting the newspaper over the tights.

“Why in the name of peace did you jump out the window, and what did you want with—­with these things?”

He twisted around in his chair to stare at me, and then stooped and clutched frantically at his leg, as if for inspiration.

“Want with those things!” he snarled.  “I suppose you can’t understand that a man might wake up in the middle of the night with a mad craving for a pair of black woolen tights, and—­”

“You needn’t be sarcastic with me,” I broke in.  “You can save that for your wife.  I suppose you also had a wild longing for the love-letters of an insurance agent—­”

And then it dawned on me, and I sat down and laughed until I cried.

“And you thought you were stealing your own letters!” I cried.  “The ones she carries fire insurance on!  Oh, Mr. Dick, Mr. Dick!”

“How was I to know it wasn’t Ju—­Miss Summers’ room?” he demanded angrily.  “Didn’t I follow the dratted dog?  And wouldn’t you have thought the wretched beast would have known me instead of sitting on its tail under the bed and yelling for mother?  I gave her the dog myself.  Oh, I tell you, Minnie, if I ever get away from this place—­”

“You’ve got to get away this minute,” I broke in, remembering.  “They’ll be coming any instant now.”

He got up and looked around him helplessly.

“Where’ll I go?” he asked.  “I can’t go back to the shelter-house.”

I looked at him and he tried to grin.

“Fact,” he said, “hard to believe, but—­fact, Minnie.  She’s got the door locked.  Didn’t I tell you she is of a suspicious nature?  She was asleep when I left, and mostly she sleeps all night.  And just because she wakes when I’m out, and lets me come in thinking she’s asleep, when she has one eye open all the time, and she sees what I’d never even seen myself—­that the string of that damned garment, whatever it is, is fastened to the hook of my shoe, me thinking all the time that the weight was because I’d broken my leg jumping—­doesn’t she suddenly sit up and ask me where I’ve been?  And I—­I’m unsuspicious, Minnie, by nature, and I said I’d been asleep.  Then she jumped up and showed me that—­that thing—­those things, hanging to my shoe, and she hasn’t spoken to me since.  I wish I was dead.”