228 THE MIGHTY DREAD. 
The man approached very quietly, and stood 
within eighteen inches, looking smilingly down. 
He was very much surprised, for, mind you, 
this was no tame mouse, but an unadulterated 
mouse of the wild, or, rather, the walls. 
‘Well, I’m’ muttered he. 
But on the first word, as if he had broken 
an enchanted spell, as well as the silence, the 
mouse was gone, and the last word stuck on 
the man’s lips. 
*“ Fear not,” said he (for mighty dread 
Had seized their troubled mind),’ 
came the beautiful words, in the full-throated, 
rich, clipped accent of educated English. 
Some one had opened and shut the drawing- 
room door, letting out just those words, almost 
as it were a message. And the man, turning, 
dropped, with a yawn, into an arm-chair, and 
went to sleep. 
Ten minutes later the servant, coming into 
the dining-room to clear away the Christmas 
dinner, disturbed two mice on the _ table, 
feasting from a plate beneath the shade of 
the mistletoe. 
