e pools of the dead...

A light was dancing out upon the moor, a witchlight that came and went
unaccountably, up and down, in and out, now clearly visible, now masked
in the darkness!

"Lock the door!" snapped my companion--"if there's a key."

I crept across the room and fumbled for a moment; then:

"There is no key," I reported.

"Then wedge the chair under the knob and let no one enter until I
return!" he said, amazingly.

With that he opened the window to its fullest extent, threw his leg over
the sill, and went creeping along a wide concrete ledge, in which ran a
leaded gutter, in the direction of the tower on the right!

Not pausing to follow his instructions respecting the chair, I craned
out of the window, watching his progress, and wondering with what sudden
madness he was bitten. Indeed, I could not credit my senses, could not
believe that I heard and saw aright. Yet there out in the darkness on
the moor moved the will-o'-the-wisp, and ten yards along the gutter
crept my friend, like a great gaunt cat. Unknown to me he must have
prospected the route by daylight, for now I saw his design. The ledge
terminated only where it met the ancient wall of the tower, and it
was possible for an agile climber to step from it to the edge of the
unglazed window some four feet below, and to scramble from that point
to the stone fence and thence on to the path by which we had come from
Saul.

This difficult operation Nayland Smith successfully performed, and, to
my unbounded amazement, went racing into the darkness toward the dancing
light, headlong, like a madman! The night swallowed him up, and between
my wonder and my fear my hands trembled so violently that I could scarce
support myself where I rested, with my full weight upon the sill.

I seemed now to be moving through the fevered phases of a nightmare.
Around and below me Cragmire Tower was profoundly silent, but a faint
odor of cookery was now perceptible. Outside, from the night, came
a faint whispering as of the distant sea, but no moon and no stars
relieved the impenetrable blackness. Only out over the moor the
mysterious light still danced and moved.

One--two--three--four--five minutes passed. The light vanished and
did not appear again. Five more age-long minutes elapsed in absolute
silence, whilst I peered into the darkness of the night and listened,
every nerve in my body tense, for the return of Nayland Smith. Yet two
more minutes, which embraced a