d
boldly into the gap, and met the night view of the Banqueting-Hall face
to face.

The moon was rounding the southern side of the house. Her paling beams
streamed through the nearer windows, and lay in long strips of slanting
light on the marble pavement of the Hall. The black shadows of the
pediments between each window, alternating with the strips of light,
heightened the wan glare of the moonshine on the floor. Toward its lower
end, the Hall melted mysteriously into darkness. The ceiling was lost to
view; the yawning fire-place, the overhanging mantel-piece, the long
row of battle pictures above, were all swallowed up in night. But one
visible object was discernible, besides the gleaming windows and the
moon-striped floor. Midway in the last and furthest of the strips of
light, the tripod rose erect on its gaunt black legs, like a monster
called to life by the moon--a monster rising through the light, and
melting invisibly into the upper shadows of the Hall. Far and near, all
sound lay dead, drowned in the stagnant cold. The soothing hush of night
was awful here. The deep abysses of darkness hid abysses of silence more
immeasurable still.

She stood motionless in the door-way, with straining eyes, with
straining ears. She looked for some moving thing, she listened for
some rising sound, and looked and listened in vain. A quick ceaseless
shivering ran through her from head to foot. The shivering of fear, or
the shivering of cold? The bare doubt roused her resolute will. "Now,"
she thought, advancing a step through the door-way, "or never! I'll
count the strips of moonlight three times over, and cross the Hall."

"One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five. One, two,
three, four, five."

As the final number passed her lips at the third time of counting, she
crossed the Hall. Looking for nothing, listening for nothing, one hand
holding the candle, the other mechanically grasping the folds of her
dress, she sped, ghost-like, down the length of the ghostly place. She
reached the door of the first of the eastern rooms, opened it, and ran
in. The sudden relief of attaining a refuge, the sudden entrance into a
new atmosphere, overpowered her for the moment. She had just time to
put the candle safely on a table before she dropped giddy and breathless
into the nearest chair.

Little by little she felt the rest quieting her. In a few minutes she
became conscious of the triumph of having won her way to the e