To cover his excitement he burst out laughing.
"The old dog!" he cried.

"Do you know if he ever came in at all ?" "Between two and three, I believe," said the porter in the same tone.
Langholm laughed again, but asked no more questions, and in a little he was pacing his bedroom floor, with fevered face and tremulous stride, as he was to continue pacing it for the greater part of that August night.
Yet it was not a night spent in thought, but rather in intercepting and in casting out the kind of thoughts that chased each other through the novelist's brain.

His imagination had him by the forelock once more, but this time he was resisting with all his might.

It meant resistance to the strongest attribute that he possessed.

The man's mind was now a picture-gallery and now a stage.