s
quietly as I could up the track which led from the creek, and found
myself presently on the cliff above, close to my dear mother's grave. I
might as well sleep here as anywhere else, and when they found me dead
in the morning they would not have far to carry me.

Was I turning coward all of a sudden--I, who had looked down the barrel
of a gun a week ago and not quailed? The gleam of the white cross on
the Gormans' tomb made me start and shiver. I seemed to hear footsteps
in the long grass, and detect phantom lights away where the house was.

Presently I felt so sure that I heard steps that I could stay where I
was no longer, and hurried back by the way I had come towards the boat.
Then gathering myself angrily together, and equally sure I had heard
amiss, I turned back again and marched boldly up towards Kilgorman
House.

Whether it was desperation or some inward calling, I know not, but my
courage rose the nearer I came. What had I to fear? What worse could
happen to me in the house of my birth than out here on the pitiless
hillside?

Even when I found the avenue-gate locked and barred I did not repent.
It was easily climbed.

Soon I came under the grim walls, and, as if to greet me, a wandering
ray of the moon came out and fell on the window above the hall-door. It
even surprised me how little fear I felt as I now hauled myself up by
the creepers and clambered on to the porch. But here my triumph reached
its limit.

The window this time was closely barred. His honour had no doubt
guessed how, on my former visits, I had found entrance, and had taken
this means to thwart my next. No shaking or pulling was of any avail.
Kilgorman, by that way at least, was unassailable.

Yet I was not to be thwarted all at once. My courage, I confess, was a
little daunted as I clambered down to earth, and proceeded to feel my
way carefully round the house for some more likely entry. But entry
there was none. Every window and door was fast. The moonlight, which
swept fitfully over the stagnant swamp, struck only on sullen,
forbidding walls, and the breeze, now fast rising, moaned round the
eaves to a tune which sent a shudder through my vitals.

My courage seemed to die away with it. But I determined to make one
more round of the walls before I owned myself beaten. I tried the bar
of every window. One after another they resisted stiffly, till suddenly
I came on one (that below the room where I had found the str