sther and myself together. We
heard his slow steps dying away up the creaking staircase, until the
distant slamming of a door announced that he had reached his sanctum.

The simple oil lamp upon the table threw a weird, uncertain light over
the old room, flickering upon the carved oak panelling, and casting
strange, fantastic shadows from the high-elbowed, straight-backed
furniture. My sister's white, anxious face stood out in the obscurity
with a startling exactness of profile like one of Rembrandt's portraits.

We sat opposite to each other on either side of the table with no sound
breaking the silence save the measured ticking of the clock and the
intermittent chirping of a cricket beneath the grate.

There was something awe-inspiring in the absolute stillness. The
whistling of a belated peasant upon the high road was a relief to us,
and we strained our ears to catch the last of his notes as he plodded
steadily homewards.

At first we had made some pretence--she of knitting and I of
reading--but we soon abandoned the useless deception, and sat uneasily
waiting, starting and glancing at each other with questioning eyes
whenever the faggot crackled in the fire or a rat scampered behind the
wainscot. There was a heavy electrical feeling in the air, which weighed
us down with a foreboding of disaster.

I rose and flung the hall door open to admit the fresh breeze of the
night. Ragged clouds swept across the sky, and the moon peeped out at
times between their hurrying fringes, bathing the whole countryside in
its cold, white radiance. From where I stood in the doorway I could see
the edge of the Cloomber wood, though the house itself was only
visible from the rising ground some little distance off. At my sister's
suggestion we walked together, she with her shawl over her head, as far
as the summit of this elevation, and looked out in the direction of the
Hall.

There was no illumination of the windows tonight. From roof to basement
not a light twinkled in any part of the great building. Its huge mass
loomed up dark and sullen amid the trees which surrounded it, looking
more like some giant sarcophagus than a human habitation.

To our overwrought nerves there was something of terror in its mere bulk
and its silence. We stood for some little time peering at it through the
darkness, and then we made our way back to the parlour again, where
we sat waiting--waiting, we knew not for what, and yet with absolute
convictio