to
something moving towards them across the lawn. It came silently. In
outline it was large and curiously spread. It rose high, too, for the
sky above the shrubberies, still pale gold from the sunset, was dimmed
by its passage. She declared afterwards that it move in "looping
circles," but what she perhaps meant to convey was "spirals."

She screamed faintly. "It's come at last! And it's you that brought it!"

She turned excitedly, half afraid, half angry, to Sanderson. With a
breathless sort of gasp she said it, politeness all forgotten. "I knew
it ... if you went on. I knew it. Oh! Oh!" And she cried again, "Your
talking has brought it out!" The terror that shook her voice was rather
dreadful.

But the confusion of her vehement words passed unnoticed in the first
surprise they caused. For a moment nothing happened.

"What is it you think you see, my dear?" asked her husband, startled.
Sanderson said nothing. All three leaned forward, the men still sitting,
but Mrs. Bittacy had rushed hurriedly to the window, placing herself of
a purpose, as it seemed, between her husband and the lawn. She pointed.
Her little hand made a silhouette against the sky, the yellow shawl
hanging from the arm like a cloud.

"Beyond the cedar--between it and the lilacs." The voice had lost its
shrillness; it was thin and hushed. "There ... now you see it going
round upon itself again--going back, thank God!... going back to the
Forest." It sank to a whisper, shaking. She repeated, with a great
dropping sigh of relief--"Thank God! I thought ... at first ... it was
coming here ... to us!... David ... to _you_ !"

She stepped back from the window, her movements confused, feeling in the
darkness for the support of a chair, and finding her husband's
outstretched hand instead. "Hold me, dear, hold me, please ... tight. Do
not let me go." She was in what he called afterwards "a regular state."
He drew her firmly down upon her chair again.

"Smoke, Sophie, my dear," he said quickly, trying to make his voice calm
and natural. "I see it, yes. It's smoke blowing over from the gardener's
cottage...."

"But, David,"--and there was a new horror in her whisper now--"it made a
noise. It makes it still. I hear it swishing." Some such word she
used--swishing, sishing, rushing, or something of the kind. "David, I'm
very frightened. It's something awful! That man has called it out...!"

"Hush, hush," whispered her husband. He stroked her trembling hand