smissed the
nightmare theory, was that some loafer was hanging about, and seeing the
lighted window had climbed up to look in. He said as much.

"No. It was _him_," she interrupted decisively. "There was no
mistaking him. If it were the last word I breathed I should still say
so. What does it mean? Oh, what does it mean?" she repeated in tones
of the utmost distress.

"Hush, hush, my dearest! Remember, Bentley will hear, and--"

"_There he is again_!"

The words broke forth in a shriek. Quickly Eustace glanced at the
window. The squares of glass, black against the outer night, showed
nothing in the shape of a human countenance. A large moth buzzed
against them, and that was all.

Her terror was so genuine, as with blanched face and starting eyes she
glared upon the black glass, that ever so slight a thrill of
superstitious dread shot through him in spite of himself.

"Quick!" she gasped. "Quick! Go and look all round the house! I am
not frightened to remain alone. Mr Bentley will stay with me. Go,
quick!"

The overseer, who had judiciously kept in the background, now came
forward.

"Certainly, Mrs Carhayes. Better come into this room and sit down for
a bit. Why, you must have been mistaken," he went on, cheerily placing
a chair at the sitting room fire, and kicking up the nearly dead logs.
"Nobody could get up at your window. Why, its about fifteen feet from
the ground and there's nothing lying about for them to step on. Not
even a monkey could climb up there--though--wait. I did hear once of a
case where a baboon, a wild one out of the _veldt_, climbed up on to the
roof of a house and swung himself right into a room. I don't say I
believe it, though. It's a little too much of a Dutchman's yarn to be
readily swallowed."

Thus the good-natured fellow rambled on, intent on cheering her up and
diverting her thoughts. The rooms occupied by himself and his family
were at the other end of the house and opened outside on the _stoep_,
hence the sound of her terrified shriek had not reached them.

Eustace, on investigation intent, had slipped round the outside of the
house with the stealth and rapidity of a savage. But, as he had
expected, there was no sign of the presence of any living thing. He put
his ear to the ground and listened long and intently. Not a sound. No
stealthy footfall broke the silence of the night.

But as he crouched there in the darkness, with every nerve, every
fac