house looking down on us, how could I have imagined such a thing?
The dogs knew better: _they_ knew what the house would tolerate and what
it would not. I even fancied that they knew what was passing through
my mind, and pitied me for my frivolity. But even that feeling probably
reached them through a thick fog of listlessness. I had an idea that
their distance from me was as nothing to my remoteness from them. The
impression they produced was that of having in common one memory so deep
and dark that nothing that had happened since was worth either a growl
or a wag.

"I say," I broke out abruptly, addressing myself to the dumb circle, "do
you know what you look like, the whole lot of you? You look as if you'd
seen a ghost--that's how you look! I wonder if there _is_ a ghost here,
and nobody but you left for it to appear to?" The dogs continued to gaze
at me without moving....

*****

It was dark when I saw Lanrivain's motor lamps at the cross-roads--and I
wasn't exactly sorry to see them. I had the sense of having escaped from
the loneliest place in the whole world, and of not liking loneliness--to
that degree--as much as I had imagined I should. My friend had brought
his solicitor back from Quimper for the night, and seated beside a fat
and affable stranger I felt no inclination to talk of Kerfol....

But that evening, when Lanrivain and the solicitor were closeted in the
study, Madame de Lanrivain began to question me in the drawing-room.

"Well--are you going to buy Kerfol?" she asked, tilting up her gay chin
from her embroidery.

"I haven't decided yet. The fact is, I couldn't get into the house," I
said, as if I had simply postponed my decision, and meant to go back for
another look.

"You couldn't get in? Why, what happened? The family are mad to sell the
place, and the old guardian has orders--"

"Very likely. But the old guardian wasn't there."

"What a pity! He must have gone to market. But his daughter--?"

"There was nobody about. At least I saw no one."

"How extraordinary! Literally nobody?"

"Nobody but a lot of dogs--a whole pack of them--who seemed to have the
place to themselves."

Madame de Lanrivain let the embroidery slip to her knee and folded her
hands on it. For several minutes she looked at me thoughtfully.

"A pack of dogs--you _saw_ them?"

"Saw them? I saw nothing else!"

"How many?" She dropped her voice a little. "I've always wondered--"

I looked at her with surprise: I