tine. Having
completed this useless progress, Rip once more resorted to the passage
and the front door, by which he paused, whimpering, in an uncertain,
almost a wistful attitude.

"Open it!" said Julian.

Valentine did so.

They looked out upon the broad and dreary stone steps, and waited,
listening. There was no sound. Rip still whimpered, rather feebly. His
excitement was evidently dying away. At last Valentine shut the door,
and they went back again to the tentroom, accompanied closely by the
dog, who gradually regained his calmness, and who presently jumped of
his own accord into his basket, and, after turning quickly round some
half-dozen times, composed himself once more to sleep.

"I wish, after all, we had stayed in the other room by the fire," Julian
said. "Give me some brandy."

Valentine poured some into a glass and Julian swallowed it at a gulp.

"We mustn't have Rip in the room another time," he added. "He spoilt the
whole thing."

"What whole thing?" Valentine asked, sinking down in a chair.

"Well, the sitting. Perhaps--perhaps one of Marr's mysterious
manifestations might have come off to-night."

Valentine did not reply at first. When he did, he startled Julian by
saying:

"Perhaps one of them did come off."

"Did?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"What was Rip barking at?"

"There's no accounting for what dogs will do. They often bark at
shadows."

"At shadows--yes, exactly. But what cast a shadow to-night?"

Julian laughed with some apparent uneasiness.

"Perhaps a coming event," he exclaimed.

Valentine looked at him rather gravely.

"That is exactly what I felt," he said.

"Explain. For I was only joking."

"I felt, perhaps it was only a fancy, that this second sitting of ours
brought some event a stage nearer, a stage nearer on its journey."

"To what?"

"I felt--to us."

"Fancy."

"Probably. You didn't feel it?"

"I? Oh, I scarcely know what I felt. I must say, though, that squatting
in the dark, and saying nothing for such an age, and--and all the rest of
it, doesn't exactly toughen one's nerves. That little demon of a Rip
quite gave me the horrors when he started barking. What fools we are! I
should think nothing of mounting a dangerous horse, or sailing a boat in
rough weather, or risking my life as we all do half our time in one way
or another. Yet a dog and a dark room give me the shudders. Funny, Val,
isn't it?"

Valentine answered, "If it is a dog and a dark room.