tation of sticks."

"No, I don't," said Paynter, throwing one leg over another and lighting
a cigar. "But I shall stop here till he comes out."

"Very well," said Ashe shortly, "I'll stop with you, if only to see the
end of this farce."

The doctor said nothing, but he also kept his seat and accepted one of
the American's cigars. If Treherne had been attending to the matter he
might have noted, with his sardonic superstition, a curious fact--that,
while all three men were tacitly condemning themselves to stay out all
night if necessary, all, by one blank omission or oblivion, assumed that
it was impossible to follow their host into the wood just in front of
them. But Treherne, though still in the garden, had wandered away from
the garden table, and was pacing along the single line of trees against
the dark sea. They had in their regular interstices, showing the sea
as through a series of windows, something of the look of the ghost or
skeleton of a cloister, and he, having thrown his coat once more over
his neck, like a cape, passed to and fro like the ghost of some not very
sane monk.

All these men, whether skeptics or mystics, looked back for the rest of
their lives on that night as on something unnatural. They sat still or
started up abruptly, and paced the great garden in long detours, so that
it seemed that no three of them were together at a time, and none knew
who would be his companion; yet their rambling remained within the same
dim and mazy space. They fell into snatches of uneasy slumber; these
were very brief, and yet they felt as if the whole sitting, strolling,
or occasional speaking had been parts of a single dream.

Paynter woke once, and found Ashe sitting opposite him at a table
otherwise empty; his face dark in shadow and his cigar-end like the red
eye of a Cyclops. Until the lawyer spoke, in his steady voice, Paynter
was positively afraid of him. He answered at random and nodded again;
when he again woke the lawyer was gone, and what was opposite him was
the bald, pale brow of the doctor; there seemed suddenly something
ominous in the familiar fact that he wore spectacles. And yet the
vanishing Ashe had only vanished a few yards away, for he turned at that
instant and strolled back to the table. With a jerk Paynter realized
that his nightmare was but a trick of sleep or sleeplessness, and spoke
in his natural voice, but rather loud.

"So you've joined us again; where's Treherne?"

"Oh, still