ng, and, looking up, saw the barber's door very gently
closing and shutting out a glimpse of his white jacket.

For the moment she thought little of this. The latch had scarcely clicked
before she reached the landing outside, from which the last flight ran
straight up to her mistress's door. It stood open, though she had closed
it less than a quarter of an hour before. This was the first time she had
found it open on her return.

She caught at the stair-rail. Through the door and over the line of the
topmost stair she could just see the upper panes of the window at the back
of Mrs. Johnstone's room. A heavy beam crossed the ceiling in front of
the window, and from it, from a hook she had used that morning for
twisting her yarn, depended a black bundle.

The bundle--it was big and shapeless--swayed ever so slightly between her
and the yellow light sifted through the window. She tottered up, her
knees shaking, and flung herself into the room with a scream.

While she fumbled, still screaming, at the bundle hanging from the beam,
a step came swiftly up the stair, and the barber stood in the doorway.
She recognised him by his white suit, and on the instant saw his face for
the first time. He was a negro.

He laid a finger on his lips. Somehow the light showed them to her
blood-red, although the rest of his features, barring the whites of his
eyes, were all but indiscernible in the dusk. And somehow Kirstie felt a
silence imposed on her by this gesture. He stepped across the boards
swiftly and silently as a cat, found a stool, and set it under the beam.
In the act of mounting it he signalled to Kirstie to run downstairs for
help.

Silent as he, Kirstie slipped out at the door: on the threshold she
glanced over her shoulder and saw him upon the stool fumbling with one
hand at the yarn-rope, and with the other searching his apron pocket for a
knife or razor. She ran down the garret stairs, down the next
flight. . . .

Here, on the landing, she paused. She had not screamed since the black
man first appeared in the doorway. She was not screaming now; she felt
that she could not even raise the faintest cry. But a suspicion fastened
like a hand on the back of her neck and held her.

She hesitated for a short while, and began to climb the stairs again.
From the landing she looked up into the room. The black man was still on
the stool, his hand still on the rope. He had not cut the bundle down--
was no longe