Why, I cannot say, but she had fully made up her mind that when I was brought home dead, as she believed that, sooner or later, I was pretty sure to be, I should be brought to the side-door.

Now "the side-door," as it was called, was a little door leading into the garden, and less used, perhaps, than any other door in the house.

Mrs.Bundle, I believe, had decided that in that tragedy which she was constantly rehearsing, the men who should find my body would avoid the front-door, to spare my father the sudden shock of meeting my corpse.

The side-door, too, was just below the nursery windows.

Mrs.Bundle herself, would, probably, be the first to hear any knocking at it, and she naturally pictured herself as taking a prominent part in the terrible scene she so often fancied.