n the wall tapped monotonously.

"Uncle Mathew!" she whispered, and then she called more loudly.

"Uncle Mathew! Uncle Mathew!"

There was no answer and suddenly a strange, quite unreasoning terror
caught her by the throat. It was all that she could do not to cry out
and run down to the gas-lit passage. She held herself there by sheer
force; the smell of the sea was now very strong; there was a tang of
rotten seaweed in it.

As she remained there she could see more clearly, but it seemed that
the room was full of some dim obscuring mist. She moved forward into
the room, knocked her knee against a table, and then as the panic
gained upon her called more loudly, "Uncle... Uncle. Are you in? Where
are you? It's I, Maggie."

"Oh well... of course he isn't here," she said to herself. "He's
downstairs." And yet, strangely, something seemed to persuade her that
he was there; it was as though he were maliciously hiding from her to
tease her.

Feeling her way cautiously, her hands before her face, she moved
forward to close the windows, thinking that she must shut out that
abominable sound of the sea and the stale stink of the seaweed. She was
suddenly caught by a sweep of rain that wetted her hair and face and
neck. She started back and touched a piece of damp cloth. She turned,
and there, very close to her but above her and staring over her head,
was Uncle Mathew's face. It was so close to her that she could have
touched it by putting up her hand. It was white-grey and she would not
have seen it at all had she not been very near to it.

She realised nothing, but she felt that her knees were trembling and
that she would fall if she did not steady herself. She put out her hand
and clutched damp heavy thick cloth, cloth that enwrapped as it seemed
some weighty substance like stone or brick.

She passed her hand upwards and suddenly the damp cloth gave way
beneath her fingers, sinking inwards against something soft and flabby.
She sprang away. She stood for one shuddering moment, then she screamed
again and again, shrieking and running, as it were for her life, out of
the room, down the passage. She could not find the staircase. Oh! she
could not find the staircase! She stood there, leaning against the damp
wall, crying: "Oh help! Help! Quickly!"

There were steps and voices, then the woman whom she had seen before
appeared at the turn of the stair holding a lamp.

"What is it?" she asked, raising the light high. Maggi