Page:Hornung - Irralies Bushranger.djvu/115

 for fear of rousing sleepy watchers from their chairs. There were none. The veranda was deserted; so was the yard. The very sentinel had been withdrawn from the iron-store door.

Irralie could scarce believe her eyes. Her heart beat high; and yet the seeming safety had in ways a greater terror for her than danger seen and realized. She bent her head and listened intently. At first nothing; then a clink, then a laugh, in the middle distance, through closed doors; and then a snatch of Mendelssohn, wonderfully played on the harsh old school-room piano, but with the soft pedal down all the time. Irralie listened with raised eyebrows and a hostile heart for the accomplished exquisite to whom she had not yet spoken a word. But a moment later she had her second glimpse of him. The lieder ended, a door opened, and out came the pianist with the strut of a game-cock and the carriage of a guardsman. One glance through his eye-glass at the iron-store, and he was gone as