ook, and dashed through the window
into the balcony.

"And we, too, George," exclaimed Henry; "we will follow Mr. Marchdale.
This dreadful affair concerns us more nearly than it does him."

The lady who was the mother of these young men, and of the beautiful
girl who had been so awfully visited, screamed aloud, and implored of
them to stay. But the voice of Mr. Marchdale was heard exclaiming
aloud,--

"I see it--I see it; it makes for the wall."

They hesitated no longer, but at once rushed into the balcony, and from
thence dropped into the garden.

The mother approached the bed-side of the insensible, perhaps the
murdered girl; she saw her, to all appearance, weltering in blood, and,
overcome by her emotions, she fainted on the floor of the room.

When the two young men reached the garden, they found it much lighter
than might have been fairly expected; for not only was the morning
rapidly approaching, but the mill was still burning, and those mingled
lights made almost every object plainly visible, except when deep
shadows were thrown from some gigantic trees that had stood for
centuries in that sweetly wooded spot. They heard the voice of Mr.
Marchdale, as he cried,--

"There--there--towards the wall. There--there--God! how it bounds
along."

The young men hastily dashed through a thicket in the direction from
whence his voice sounded, and then they found him looking wild and
terrified, and with something in his hand which looked like a portion of
clothing.

"Which way, which way?" they both cried in a breath.

He leant heavily on the arm of George, as he pointed along a vista of
trees, and said in a low voice,--

"God help us all. It is not human. Look there--look there--do you not
see it?"

They looked in the direction he indicated. At the end of this vista was
the wall of the garden. At that point it was full twelve feet in height,
and as they looked, they saw the hideous, monstrous form they had traced
from the chamber of their sister, making frantic efforts to clear the
obstacle.

Then they saw it bound from the ground to the top of the wall, which it
very nearly reached, and then each time it fell back again into the
garden with such a dull, heavy sound, that the earth seemed to shake
again with the concussion. They trembled--well indeed they might, and
for some minutes they watched the figure making its fruitless efforts to
leave the place.

"What--what is it?" whispered Henry, in hoarse ac