I looked at the clock.  It was a quarter after four, and except for the occasional crunch of one ice-cake hitting another in the yard, everything was quiet.  And then I heard the stealthy sound of oars in the lower hall.

I am not a brave woman.  I lay there, hoping Mr. Reynolds would hear and open his door.  But he was sleeping soundly.  Peter snarled and ran out into the hall, and the next moment I heard Mr. Ladley speaking.  “Down, Peter,” he said.  “Down.  Go and lie down.”

I took my candle and went out into the hall.  Mr. Ladley was stooping over the boat, trying to tie it to the staircase.  The rope was short, having been cut, and he was having trouble.  Perhaps it was the candle-light, but he looked ghost-white and haggard.

“I borrowed your boat, Mrs. Pitman,” he said, civilly enough.  “Mrs. Ladley was not well, and I—­I went to the drug store.”

“You’ve been more than two hours going to the drug store,” I said.

He muttered something about not finding any open at first, and went into his room.  He closed and locked the door behind him, and although Peter whined and scratched, he did not let him in.

He looked so agitated that I thought I had been harsh, and that perhaps she was really ill.  I knocked at the door, and asked if I could do anything.  But he only called “No” curtly through the door, and asked me to take that infernal dog away.

I went back to bed and tried to sleep, for the water had dropped an inch or so on the stairs, and I knew the danger was over.  Peter came, shivering, at dawn, and got on to the sofa with me.  I put an end of the quilt over him, and he stopped shivering after a time and went to sleep.

The dog was company.  I lay there, wide awake, thinking about Mr. Pitman’s death, and how I had come, by degrees, to be keeping a cheap boarding-house in the flood district, and to having to take impudence from everybody who chose to rent a room from me, and to being called a she-devil.  From that I got to thinking again about the Ladleys, and how she had said he was a fiend, and to doubting about his having gone out for medicine for her.  I dozed off again at daylight, and being worn out, I slept heavily.

At seven o’clock Mr. Reynolds came to the door, dressed for the store.  He was a tall man of about fifty, neat and orderly in his habits, and he always remembered that I had seen better days, and treated me as a lady.

“Never mind about breakfast for me this morning, Mrs. Pitman,” he said.  “I’ll get a cup of coffee at the other end of the bridge.  I’ll take the boat and send it back with Terry.”

He turned and went along the hall and down to the boat.  I heard him push off from the stairs with an oar and row out into the street.  Peter followed him to the stairs.

At a quarter after seven Mr. Ladley came out and called to me:  “Just bring in a cup of coffee and some toast,” he said.  “Enough for one.”