into their case, my companion began to tug
at his left ear.

"Have we been over-confident?" he said, narrowing his eyes in
speculative fashion. "No less than three times I have had the idea
that something, or some one, has just dropped out of sight, _behind_
us, as I focussed...."

"What do you mean, Smith?"

"Are we"--he glanced about him as though the vastness were peopled
with listening Chinamen--"_followed_?"

Silently we looked into one another's eyes, each seeking for the dread
which neither had named. Then:

"Come on, Petrie!" said Smith, grasping my arm: and at quick march we
were off again.

Cragmire Tower stood upon a very slight eminence, and what had looked
like a green tongue, from the moorland slopes above, was in fact a
creek, flanked by lush land, which here found its way to the sea. The
house which we were come to visit consisted in a low, two-storey
building, joining the ancient tower on the east, with two smaller
out-buildings. There was a miniature kitchen-garden, and a few stunted
fruit trees in the north-west corner; the whole being surrounded by a
grey stone wall.

The shadow of the tower fell sharply across the path, which ran up
almost alongside of it. We were both extremely warm by reason of our
long and rapid walk on that hot day, and this shade should have been
grateful to us. In short, I find it difficult to account for the
unwelcome chill which I experienced at the moment that I found myself
at the foot of the time-worn monument. I know that we both pulled up
sharply and looked at one another as though acted upon by some mutual
disturbance.

But not a sound broke the stillness save the remote murmuring, until a
solitary sea-gull rose in the air and circled directly over the tower,
uttering its mournful and unmusical cry. Automatically to my mind
sprang the lines of the poem:

Far from all brother-men, in the weird of the fen,
With God's creatures I bide, 'mid the birds that I ken;
Where the winds ever dree, where the hymn of the sea
Brings a message of peace from the ocean to me.

Not a soul was visible about the premises; there was no sound of human
activity and no dog barked. Nayland Smith drew a long breath, glanced
back along the way we had come, then went on, following the wall, I
beside him, until we came to the gate. It was unfastened, and we
walked up the stone path through a wilderness of weeds. Four windows
of the house were visible, two on the groun