occasional scraping of feet, that he was still moving forward. He crawled
over the snow until he reached a large tree whose boughs, sharply limned
against the stars, brushed the eaves of the house.

The Hopper was aroused, tremendously aroused, by the unaccountable
actions of Muriel's father. It flashed upon him that Wilton, in his deep
hatred of his rival collector, was about to set fire to Talbot's house,
and incendiarism was a crime which The Hopper, with all his moral
obliquity, greatly abhorred.

Several minutes passed, a period of anxious waiting, and then a sound
reached him which, to his keen professional sense, seemed singularly like
the forcing of a window. The Hopper knew just how much pressure is
necessary to the successful snapping back of a window catch, and Wilton
had done the trick neatly and with a minimum amount of noise. The window
thus assaulted was not, he now determined, the French window suggested by
Muriel, but one opening on a terrace which ran along the front of the
house. The Hopper heard the sash moving slowly in the frame. He reached
the steps, deposited the jar in a pile of snow, and was soon peering into
a room where Wilton's presence was advertised by the fitful flashing of
his lamp in a far corner.

"He's beat me to ut!" muttered The Hopper, realizing that Muriel's father
was indeed on burglary bent, his obvious purpose being to purloin,
extract, and remove from its secret hiding-place the coveted plum-blossom
vase. Muriel, in her longing for a Christmas of peace and happiness, had
not reckoned with her father's passionate desire to possess the porcelain
treasure--a desire which could hardly fail to cause scandal, if it did not
land him behind prison bars.