sed his arm and pointed to the ceiling. The other fellow
raised his head and followed the direction of his companion's arm. I
began to understand at last. They were going upstairs, and the room
directly overhead to which they pointed had been until this night my
bedroom. It was the room in which I had experienced that very morning so
strange a sensation of fear, and but for which I should then have been
lying asleep in the narrow bed against the window.

The Indians then began to move silently around the room; they were going
upstairs, and they were coming round my side of the table. So stealthy
were their movements that, but for the abnormally sensitive state of the
nerves, I should never have heard them. As it was, their cat-like tread
was distinctly audible. Like two monstrous black cats they came round
the table toward me, and for the first time I perceived that the smaller
of the two dragged something along the floor behind him. As it trailed
along over the floor with a soft, sweeping sound, I somehow got the
impression that it was a large dead thing with outstretched wings, or a
large, spreading cedar branch. Whatever it was, I was unable to see it
even in outline, and I was too terrified, even had I possessed the power
over my muscles, to move my neck forward in the effort to determine its
nature.

Nearer and nearer they came. The leader rested a giant hand upon the
table as he moved. My lips were glued together, and the air seemed to
burn in my nostrils. I tried to close my eyes, so that I might not see
as they passed me; but my eyelids had stiffened, and refused to obey.
Would they never get by me? Sensation seemed also to have left my legs,
and it was as if I were standing on mere supports of wood or stone.
Worse still, I was conscious that I was losing the power of balance, the
power to stand upright, or even to lean backwards against the wall. Some
force was drawing me forward, and a dizzy terror seized me that I should
lose my balance, and topple forward against the Indians just as they
were in the act of passing me.

Even moments drawn out into hours must come to an end some time, and
almost before I knew it the figures had passed me and had their feet
upon the lower step of the stairs leading to the upper bedrooms. There
could not have been six inches between us, and yet I was conscious only
of a current of cold air that followed them. They had not touched me,
and I was convinced that they had not seen