horse
galloping; but when I questioned more closely I found that the aunt had
heard nothing, though it is true she is a bit deaf, and she was further
back in the room. Of course, both he and Miss Hisgins had been in an
extremely nervous state and ready to hear anything. The door might have
been slammed by a sudden puff of wind owing to some inner door being
opened; and as for the grip on the handle, that may have been nothing
more than the snick catching.

"With regard to the kisses and the sounds of the horse galloping, I
pointed out that these might have seemed ordinary enough sounds, if they
had been only cool enough to reason. As I told him, and as he knew, the
sounds of a horse galloping carry a long way on the wind so that what he
had heard might have been nothing more than a horse being ridden some
distance away. And as for the kiss, plenty of quiet noises--the rustle of
a paper or a leaf--have a somewhat similar sound, especially if one is in
an overstrung condition and imagining things.

"I finished preaching this little sermon on commonsense versus hysteria
as we put out the lights and left the billiard room. But neither
Beaumont nor Miss Hisgins would agree that there had been any fancy on
their parts.

"We had come out of the billiard room by this time and were going along
the passage and I was still doing my best to make both of them see the
ordinary, commonplace possibilities of the happening, when what killed my
pig, as the saying goes, was the sound of a hoof in the dark billiard
room we had just left.

"I felt the 'creep' come on me in a flash, up my spine and over the back
of my head. Miss Hisgins whooped like a child with the whooping cough and
ran up the passage, giving little gasping screams. Beaumont, however,
ripped 'round on his heels and jumped back a couple of yards. I gave back
too, a bit, as you can understand.

"'There it is,' he said in a low, breathless voice. 'Perhaps you'll
believe now.'

"'There's certainly something,' I whispered, never taking my gaze off the
closed door of the billiard room.

"'H'sh!' he muttered. 'There it is again.'

"There was a sound like a great horse pacing 'round and 'round the
billiard room with slow, deliberate steps. A horrible cold fright took me
so that it seemed impossible to take a full breath, you know the feeling,
and then I saw we must have been walking backward for we found ourselves
suddenly at the opening of the long passage.

"We stop