A Wilderness of Monkeys

ouse. There was a curious silence about that house. It seemed a discreet, polite silence, a silence of menials cursing under their breaths. One felt it in the subdued hall, and on the quiet stairs, and at the door of the colonel's room.

Beyond that, on Henry's flight, was a kind of airy quietness, a kind of white or crystal quietness due to a little half-curtained window that showed the sky and the crest of the hills.

But sure enough the day came, or the late evening, when the silence was broken, and one knew it an unreal silence, a waiting silence, a kind of silence of people from below stairs.

Of the breaking of the silence I shall tell later; but, first, of the extreme silence:--

Dinner was always promptly served at seven, to Henry, in the hushed front room with the outjutting window-seat which he liked. At seven-fifteen the colonel dined. At seven-thirty the gas person on the first floor ate--when he was not, that is, out at the "Royal" bar drinking.

But on this historic