his, as though they had been ghosts, indeed, and
had taken to flight at the breath of the living.

"Speak! Who is it?" cried Winifred with a fearful shrillness now. A
chair grated on the floor inside, hurried steps were heard, a key
turned, the door opened a very little, and Winifred saw the gaunt face
of Rachel Craik looking dourly at her, for she had frightened this
masterful woman very thoroughly.

"Oh, aunt, it _is_ you!" gasped Winifred with a flutter of relief.

"You are to go to bed, Winnie," said Rachel.

"It is you! They have let you out, then?"

"Yes."

"Tell me what happened; let me come in--"

"Go back to bed; there's a good girl. I'll tell you everything in the
morning."

"Oh, but I am glad! I was so lonely and frightened! Aunt, what was it
all about?"

"About nothing; as far as I can discover," said Rachel Craik--"a mere
mare's-nest found by a set of stupid police. Some man--a Mr. Ronald
Tower--was supposed to have been murdered, and I was supposed to have
some connection with it, though I had never seen the creature in my
life. Now the man has turned up safe and sound, and the pack of noodles
have at last thought fit to allow a respectable woman to come home to
her bed."

"Oh, how good! Thank heaven! But, you have some one in there with you?"

"In here--where?"

"Why, in the room, aunt."

"I? No, no one."

"I am sure I heard--"

"Now, really, you must go to bed, Winifred! What are you doing awake at
this hour of the morning, roaming about the house? You were asleep half
an hour ago--"

"Oh, then, it was your light I saw in my sleep! I thought I heard a man
say: 'She is the image--'"

"Just think of troubling me with your dreams at this unearthly hour! I'm
tired, child; go to bed."

"Yes--but, aunt, this day's work has cost me my situation. I am
dismissed!"

"Well, a holiday will do you good."

"Good gracious--you take it coolly!"

"Go to bed."

A sudden din of tumbling weights and splintering wood broke out behind
the half-open door. For, within the room a man had been sitting on a
chair tilted back on its two hind legs. The chair was old and slender,
the man huge; and one of the chair-legs had collapsed under the weight
and landed the man on the floor.

"Oh, aunt! didn't you say that no one--" began Winifred.

The sentence was never finished. Rachel Craik, her features twisted in
anger, pushed the young girl with a force which sent her staggering, and
then immediately s