thin.

It seemed to Max, however, as he stood there, with his eyes fixed on the
planks, trying to discover an aperture, that between the cracks of the
boards there glimmered a faint light. It seemed to flicker, then it died
out.

Surely, he thought, the girl has not summoned enough courage to go into
the room by herself?

He hurried back down the passage, and made his way as before to the
wharf. Stumbling round the piles of timber, he found the lane by which
he had entered and left the house. It seemed to him, though he told
himself it must be only fancy, that some of the loose planks had been
disturbed since his last journey over them. Reaching the door of
outhouse, which he had left ajar, he found it shut.

He was now sure that some one had gone in, or come out, since he left;
and for a moment the circumstance seemed to him sufficiently suspicious
to make him pause. The next moment, however, the remembrance of the
girl's white face, of the pleading blue eyes, returned to him vividly,
calling to him, drawing him back by an irresistible spell. He pushed
open the door boldly, crossed the brick floor and reentered the inner
room. The candle was still burning on the table, but the girl was not
there.

Max looked round the room. He was puzzled, suspicious. As he stood by
the table staring at the wall opposite the fireplace, wondering whether
to go out or to explore further, he found his eyes attracted to a spot
in the wall-paper where, in the feeble light, something like two
glittering beads shone out uncannily in the middle of the pattern. With
a curious sensation down his spine, Max took a hasty step back to the
door, and the beads moved slowly.

It was a pair of eyes watching him as he moved.

CHAPTER IX.

THE MAN WHO HESITATES.

Max had become accustomed, in the course of this adventurous visit, to
surprises and alarms. Every step in the enterprise he had undertaken had
brought a fresh excitement, a fresh horror. But nothing that he had so
far heard or seen had given him such a sick feeling of indefinable
terror as the sight of these two eyes, turning to watch his every
movement. For a moment he watched them, then he made a bold dash for the
place where he had seen them, and aimed a blow with his fist at the
wall.

He heard the loose plaster rattle down; but when he looked for the
result of his blow, he saw nothing but the old-fashioned, dirty paper on
the wall, apparently without a hole or tear in