like to find out something of the inside of this affair, if possible."
Finch returned, as between gaolers, to the torture room. He heard the clock on the landing strike two, and this was echoed in a silvery tone by the French clock in the drawing-room, and in an abrupt metallic voice by the clock on the mantelpiece of the sitting-room. Nicholas took out his large hunting-case watch and looked at it. . . . Ernest looked at his nails. . . . Meg hung over her baby. . . . Maurice dropped into a comfortable chair and began to fill his pipe with his active hand, the disabled one lying, unmoved and smooth, on the leather arm of the chair. Finch, seeing it, felt a sudden morbid envy of it. It was hopelessly injured, neglected, let alone. . . . Renny took the muzzle of one of his spaniels in his lean brown hands, opened it, and examined the healthy white teeth. . . . Piers, in a corner, laughed at Pheasant. . . . Augusta produced a piece of crochet work from a bag, and a long, stabbing crochet-hook. . . . Finch saw them all as torturers.
There was Rags, closing the folding doors upon them, seeming to say: "There naow, I leave you to your own devices! Whatever you may gaow through, it's all the sime to me!"
But not yet were they to settle down. A voice came from Grandmother's room, crying: "Nick! Nick! Nick!"
Ernest clapped his hands on his ears.
"Boney!" ejaculated Nicholas, hoarsely. "God, what has come over the bird?"
"He has made up his mind," said Augusta, "to torture us."
Ernest cautiously removed his hands from his ears. "It is unbearable! I don't know what we are going to do about it."
Maurice suggested: "Perhaps it would be better to put him away, as he seems to be out of sorts and all that."
Every blazing glance in the room branded him as an outsider.
"He will be all right," said Renny, "as soon as he's
