is friends
in Paris had so emphatically warned him, was on the box driving him to
his obscure lair in the heart of the mountains. Or was the original
driver himself a bandit, and the beautiful girl reclining on the
cushions a bandit's daughter? He dozed, and on coming to his waking
senses again, discovered that the darkness had slightly lifted. He could
see the distant horizon, defined by inky woods, outlined on a lighter
sky. A few stars, scattered here and there in this tableau, whilst
emphasizing the vastness of the space overhead--a vastness that was
positively annihilating--at the same time conveyed a sense of solitude
and loneliness, in perfect harmony with the trees, and rocks, and
gorges. The effect was only transitory, for with a suddenness almost
reminding one of stage mechanism, the moon burst through its temporary
covering of clouds, and in a moment the whole country-side was illumined
with a soft white glow. It was a warm night, and the breeze that rolled
down from the mountain peaks, so remote and passionless, was charged to
overflowing with resinous odours, mingled with which, and just strong
enough to be recognizable, was the faint, pungent smell of decay. A
couple of hares, looking somewhat ashamed of themselves, sprang into
upright positions, and with frightened whisks of their tails disappeared
into a clump of ferns. With a startled hiss a big snake drew back under
cover of a boulder, and a hawk, balked of its prey by the sudden
brilliant metamorphosis, uttered an indignant croak. But none of these
protests against the moon's innocent behaviour were heeded by Paul
Nicholas, whose whole attention was riveted on a large sombre building
standing close by the side of the road. At the first glimpse of the
place, so huge, grim, and silent, he was seized with a sensation of
absolute terror. Nothing mortal could surely inhabit such a house. The
dark, frowning walls and vacant, eye-like windows threw back a thousand
shadows, and suggested as many eerie fancies--fancies that were
corroborated by a few rank sedges and two or three white trunks of
decayed trees that rose up on either side of the building; but of
life--human life--there was not the barest suspicion.

"What a nightmare of a house!" Paul Nicholas exclaimed, gazing with a
shudder upon the remodelled and inverted images of the grey sedge, the
ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant, eye-like windows in a black and
lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre al