horrors unspeakable. Once or twice Nick spoke to her, and she knew that
she obeyed his instructions, though what they were she could never
afterwards remember. On and on they went, flying like cloud-shadows on
a windy day, yet--so it seemed to Olga--drawing no nearer to their goal,
until quite suddenly she found herself staring at the great Priory
gate-posts with their huge stone balls while Nick wrestled with the
fastenings of the gates.

They opened before her, and she drove slowly through with a curious
sensation as of entering an unknown country, though she had known the
Priory grounds from childhood. Nick clambered in beside her as she went,
and then they were off again running swiftly up the long drive with its
double line of yews to the house.

Memory awoke within her then, and she called to mind that day that
seemed so long ago when she had encountered Violet, superbly confident,
conquering the rebellious Pluto. The cry of a gull came to her now as
then, and it sounded like a cry of pain.

They came within sight of the old grey walls. Silent and tragic, they
stood up against the mist-veiled sky. The sunlight had turned to an
ominous copper glow. And in that moment Olga was afraid, with that sick
apprehension of evil that comes upon occasion even to the brave. She
gave no sign of it, but it was coiled like a serpent about her heart
from then onwards.

The front-door stood open, its Gothic archway gaping wide and
mysterious. Still with that nightmare dread upon her, she descended and
passed into the old chapel of the monks.

The stained window at the end cast a lurid stream of light along half
its length. She caught her breath in an irrepressible shudder. She
thought she had never before realized how gruesomely horrible that
window was.

Nick's hand closed upon her elbow, and she breathed again. "Shall we go
and investigate upstairs?" he said.

Mutely she yielded to the suggestion. They went down the long vault-like
hall, and turned through the archway in the south wall close to the
window. As they did so, a sudden sound rent the ghostly stillness, a
sound that echoed and echoed from wall to wall, dying at last into a
shrill thread of sound that seemed to merge into the cry of a sea-gull
over the leaden waters. As it died, there came a noise of running feet
in the corridor above, and a white-faced maid-servant rushed gasping
down the wide oak stairs.

Olga sprang to intercept her. "Jane, what is the mat