e in my wife's voice, and I
was startled at her words, for I had no conscious recollection of either
name; yet I felt a resultant exhilaration. Our lanterns had grown
strangely dim, though I was certain both had been recently trimmed and
filled; and from their far corner of the barn they threw no light
whatever into our circle. I faced an utter blackness.

"On that night," said I, "old Ike was wakened by sounds as of someone
fumbling to unbar and open the housedoor. It was an unwonted hour, and
he peered from the window of his little room. By the dim starlight--it
was just before dawn--he could see all of the open yard and roadway
before the house, with the great barn looming like a black and sinister
shadow as its farther barrier. Crossing this space, he saw the figure of
Peter Creed, grotesquely stooped and old in the obscuring gloom, moving
slowly, almost gropingly, and yet directly, as though impelled, toward
the barn's overwhelming shadow. Slowly he unbarred the great door,
swung it open, and entered the blacker shadows it concealed. The door
closed after him.

"Ike in his secure post of observation did not stir. He could not. Even
to his crude imagining there was something utterly horrible in the
thought of Creed alone at that hour in just such black darkness as this,
with the great timbered chamber haunted at least by its dread memories.
He could only wait, tense and fearful of he knew not what.

"A shriek that pierced the silence relaxed his tension, bringing almost
a sense of relief, so definite had been his expectancy. But it was a
burst of shrill laughter, ribald, uncanny, undeniable, accompanying the
shriek that gave him power of motion. He ran half naked a quarter of a
mile to the nearest neighbor's and told his story."

* * * * *

"They found Creed hanging, the rope hooked simply around his neck. It
was a silent jury that filed from the barn that morning after viewing
the body. 'Suicide,' said they, after Ike, shivering and stammering, had
testified, harking back to the untold evidence of that other morning
years before. Yes, Creed was dead, with a terrible look on his wizen
face, and the dusty old rope ran through its pulley-wheel and was fast
to a beam high above.

"'He must of climbed to the beam, made the rope fast, and jumped,' said
the foreman, solemnly. 'He must of, he must of,' repeated the man,
parrot-like, while the sweat stood out on his forehead, 'because th