“No—­yes—­I don’t know,” he returned absently.  “Run along and don’t bother, Kit.  He may take to shooting any minute.”

Anne and I went out then and shut the door, and went into the dining room and sat on our feet, for of course the bullets might come up through the floor.  Aunt Selina joined us there, and Bella, and the Mercer girls, and we sat around and talked in whispers, and Leila Mercer told of the time her grandfather had had a struggle with an escaped lunatic.

In the midst of the excitement Tom appeared in a bathrobe, looking very pale, with a bandage around his head, and the nurse at his heels threatening to leave and carrying a bottle of medicine and a spoon.  He went immediately to the pantry, and soon we could hear him giving orders and the rest hurrying around to obey them.  The hammering ceased, and the silence was even worse.  It was more suggestive.

In about fifteen minutes there was a thud, as if the cage had fallen, and the sound of feet rushing down the cellar stairs.  Then there were groans and loud oaths, and everybody talking at once, below, and the sound of a struggle.  In the dining room we all sat bent forward, with straining ears and quickened breath, until we distinctly heard someone laugh.  Then we knew that, whatever it was, it was over, and nobody was killed.

The sounds came closer, were coming up the stairs and into the pantry.  Then the door swung open, and Tom and a policeman appeared in the doorway, with the others crowding behind.  Between them they supported a grimy, unshaven object, covered with whitewash from the wall of the shaft, an object that had its hands fastened together with handcuffs, and that leered at us with a pair of the most villainously crossed eyes I have ever seen.

None of us had ever seen him before,

“Mr. Lawrence McGuirk, better known as Tubby,’” Tom said cheerfully.  “A celebrity in his particular line, which is second-story man and all-round rascal.  A victim of the quarantine, like ourselves.”

“We’ve missed him for a week,” one of the guards said with a grin.  “We’ve been real anxious about you, Tubby.  Ain’t a week goes by, when you’re in health, that we don’t hear something of you.”

Mr. McGuirk muttered something under his breath, and the men chuckled.

“It seems,” Tom said, interpreting, “that he doesn’t like us much.  He doesn’t like the food, and he doesn’t like the beds.  He says just when he got a good place fixed up in the coal cellar, Flannigan found it, and is asleep there now, this minute.”

Aunt Selina rose suddenly and cleared her throat.

“Am I to understand,” she asked severely, “that from now on we will have to add two newspaper reporters, three policemen and a burglar to the occupants of this quarantined house?  Because, if that is the case, I absolutely refuse to feed them.”

But one of the reporters stepped forward and bowed ceremoniously.