ed that I had left my hat and overcoat on a chair
near the door. There could be no mistake, as the chair was a light one,
and the weight of my overcoat threw it back against the wall.

Candle in hand, I stepped out into the hail, and was immediately met
by a crash which reverberated through the house. In my alarm my teeth
closed on the end of my tongue, with agonizing results, but the sound
died away, and I concluded that an upper window had been left open, and
that the rising wind had slammed a door. But my morale, as we say since
the war, had been shaken, and I recklessly lighted a second candle and
placed it on the table in the hall at the foot of the staircase, to
facilitate my exit in case I desired to make a hurried one.

Then I climbed slowly. The fog had apparently made its way into the
house, for when, halfway up, I turned and looked down, the candlelight
was hardly more than a spark, surrounded by a luminous aura.

I do not know exactly when I began to feel that I was not alone in
the house. It was, I think, when I was on a chair on top of a table in
Arthur's room, with my candle upheld to the ceiling. It seemed to me
that something was moving stealthily in the room overhead. I stood
there, candle upheld, and every faculty I possessed seemed centered in
my ears. It was not a footstep. It was a soft and dragging movement. Had
I not been near the ceiling I should not have heard it. Indeed, a moment
later I was not certain that I had heard it.

My chair, on top of the table, was none too securely balanced. I had
found what I was looking for, a part of the plaster ornament broken
away, and replaced by a whitish substance, not plaster. I got out my
penknife and cut away the foreign matter, showing a small hole beneath,
a bullet-hole, if I knew anything about bullet-holes.

Then I heard the dragging movement above, and what with alarm and my
insecure position, I suddenly overbalanced, chair and all. My head
must have struck on the corner of the table, for I was dazed for a
few moments. The candle had gone out, of course. I felt for the chair,
righted it, and sat down. I was dizzy and I was frightened. I was afraid
to move, lest the dragging thing above come down and creep over me in
the darkness and smother me.

And sitting there, I remembered the very things I most wished to
forget--the black curtain behind Miss Jeremy, the things flung by unseen
hands into the room, the way my watch had slid over the table an