h tightly-clenched fists for an answer. But he had not to wait very
long, for almost immediately the figure rose awkwardly to its feet, and
came over to where he stood. Its manner of moving may best be described
as shuffling; and it stretched in front of it a long cloaked arm, on
which the sleeve hung, he thought, like clothes on a washing line.

He breathed hard, and waited. Like many other people with strong wills
and sensitive nerves, Jimbo was both brave and a coward: he hoped
nothing horrid was going to happen, but he was quite ready if it should.
Yet, now that the actual moment had come, he had no particular fear, and
when he felt the touch of the hand on his shoulder, the words sprang
naturally to his lips with a little trembling laugh, more of wonder
perhaps than anything else.

"You do look a horrid ... _brute_," he was going to say, but at the
last moment he changed it to "_thing_," for, with the true intuition of
a child, he recognised that the creature inside the cloak was a kind
creature and well disposed towards him. "But how did you get in?" he
added, looking up bravely into the black visage, "because the doors are
both locked on the outside, and I couldn't get out?"

By way of reply the figure shuffled to one side, and, taking the hand
from his shoulder, pointed silently to a trap-door in the floor behind
him. As he looked, he saw it was being shut down stealthily by some one
beneath.

"Hush!" whispered the figure, almost inaudibly. "He's watching!"

"Who's watching?" he cried, curiosity taking the place of every other
emotion. "I want to see." He ran forward to the spot where the trap-door
now lay flush with the floor, but, before he had gone two steps, the
black arms shot out and caught him. He turned, struggling, and in the
scuffle that followed the cloak shrouding the figure became disarranged;
the hood dropped from the face, and he found himself looking straight
into the eyes, not of a man, but of a woman!

"It's you!" he cried, "YOU--!"

A shock ran right through his body from his head to his feet, like a
current of electricity, and he caught his breath as though he had been
struck. For one brief instant the sinister face of some one who had
terrified him in the past came back vividly to his mind, and he shrank
away in terror. But it was only for an instant, the twentieth part of an
instant. Immediately, before he could even remember the name,
recognition passed into darkness and his memory