the further room, pulled aside the curtains
and pushed the glass up, letting in the air. The bare trees were visible
in the grey gloom outside. Guildea leaned out for a minute drawing the
night air into his lungs. Presently he turned round to the Father, and
exclaimed abruptly,

"Pestilent! Isn't it?"

"Yes--most pestilent."

"Ever hear anything like it?"

"Not exactly."

"Nor I. It gives me nausea, Murchison, absolute physical nausea."

He closed the window and walked uneasily about the room.

"What d'you make of it?" he asked, over his shoulder.

"How d'you mean exactly?"

"Is it man's, woman's, or child's voice?"

"I can't tell, I can't make up my mind."

"Nor I."

"Have you heard it often?"

"Yes, since I returned from Westgate. There are never any words that I
can distinguish. What a voice!"

He spat into the fire.

"Forgive me," he said, throwing himself down in a chair. "It turns my
stomach--literally."

"And mine," said the Father, truly.

"The worst of it is," continued Guildea, with a high, nervous accent,
"that there's no brain with it, none at all--only the cunning of
idiotcy."

The Father started at this exact expression of his own conviction by
another.

"Why d'you start like that?" asked Guildea, with a quick suspicion which
showed the unnatural condition of his nerves.

"Well, the very same idea had occurred to me."

"What?"

"That I was listening to the voice of something idiotic."

"Ah! That's the devil of it, you know, to a man like me. I could fight
against brain--but this!"

He sprang up again, poked the fire violently, then stood on the
hearthrug with his back to it, and his hands thrust into the high
pockets of his trousers.

"That's the voice of the thing that's got into my house," he said.
"Pleasant, isn't it?"

And now there was really horror in his eyes, and in his voice.

"I must get it out," he exclaimed. "I must get it out. But how?"

He tugged at his short black beard with a quivering hand.

"How?" he continued. "For what is it? Where is it?"

"You feel it's here--now?"

"Undoubtedly. But I couldn't tell you in what part of the room."

He stared about, glancing rapidly at everything.

"Then you consider yourself haunted?" said Father Murchison.

He, too, was much moved and disturbed, although he was not conscious of
the presence of anything near them in the room.

"I have never believed in any nonsense of that kind, as you know,"
Guildea ans