dful night, it has
always seemed strange to me that my second nightmare, so vivid in its
terror and its nearness, should have furnished me with no inkling of
what was really going on all this while; and that I should not have been
able to put two and two together, or have discovered sooner than I did
_what_ this sound was and _where_ it came from. I can well believe that
the vile scheming which lay behind the whole experience found it an easy
trifle to direct my hearing amiss; though, of course, it may equally
well have been due to the confused condition of my mind at the time and
to the general nervous tension under which I was undoubtedly suffering.

But, whatever the cause for my stupidity at first in failing to trace
the sound to its proper source, I can only say here that it was with a
shock of unexampled horror that my eye suddenly glanced upwards and
caught sight of the figure moving in the shadows above my head among the
rafters. Up to this moment I had thought that it was somebody outside
the barn, crawling round the walls till it came to a door; and the rush
of horror that froze my heart when I looked up and saw that it was
Shorthouse creeping stealthily along a beam, is something altogether
beyond the power of words to describe.

He was staring intently down upon me, and I knew at once that it was he
who had been watching me.

This point was, I think, for me the climax of feeling in the whole
experience; I was incapable of any further sensation--that is any
further sensation in the same direction. But here the abominable
character of the affair showed itself most plainly, for it suddenly
presented an entirely new aspect to me. The light fell on the picture
from a new angle, and galvanised me into a fresh ability to feel when I
thought a merciful numbness had supervened. It may not sound a great
deal in the printed letter, but it came to me almost as if it had been
an extension of consciousness, for the Hand that held the pencil
suddenly touched in with ghastly effect of contrast the element of the
ludicrous. Nothing could have been worse just then. Shorthouse, the
masterful spirit, so intrepid in the affairs of ordinary life, whose
power increased rather than lessened in the face of danger--this man,
creeping on hands and knees along a rafter in a barn at three o'clock in
the morning, watching me all the time as a cat watches a mouse! Yes, it
was distinctly ludicrous, and while it gave me a measure with whi