BACK TO GASTON CAREW 213

Carew” ; and told the coins off in keeping with the count,
so that the last pile was as large as both the others put
together. Then slowly ending, “None for me, and one
for thee, and two for Cicely Carew,” he laid the last three
nobles with the rest.

Then he arose and stood a moment listening to the si-
lence in the house. An oldhe rat that was gnawing a rind
on the hearth looked up, and ran a little nearer to his hole.
“Tsst! come back,” said Carew, “I’m no cat!” and from
the sliding panel in the wall took out a buckskin bag tied
like a meal-sack with a string.

As he slipped the knot the throat of the bag sagged
down, and a gold piece jangled on the floor. Carew started
as if all his nerves had leaped within him at the unex-
pected sound, and closed the panel like a flash. Then, set-
ting his foot upon the fallen coin, he stopped its spinning,
and with one hand on his poniard, peering right and left,
blew the candle out.

A little while he stood and listened in the dark; a little
while his feet went to and fro in the darkness. The wind
cried in the chimney. Now and then the casements
shivered. The timbers in the wall creaked with the cold,
and the boards in the stairway cracked. Then the old he
rat came back to his rind, and his mate came out of the
crack in the wall, working her whiskers hungrily and
snuffing the smell of the candle-drip; for there was no
sound, and the coast of rat-land was clear.