ped there and listened. The sounds went on steadily with a
horrible sort of deliberateness, as if the brute were taking a sort of
malicious gusto in walking about all over the room which we had just
occupied. Do you understand just what I mean?

"Then there was a pause and a long time of absolute quiet except for an
excited whispering from some of the people down in the big hall. The
sound came plainly up the wide stairway. I fancy they were gathered
'round Miss Hisgins, with some notion of protecting her.

"I should think Beaumont and I stood there, at the end of the passage for
about five minutes, listening for any noise in the billiard room. Then I
realized what a horrible funk I was in and I said to him: 'I'm going to
see what's there.'

"'So'm I,' he answered. He was pretty white, but he had heaps of pluck.
I told him to wait one instant and I made a dash into my bedroom and got
my camera and flashlight. I slipped my revolver into my right-hand pocket
and a knuckle-duster over my left fist, where it was ready and yet would
not stop me from being able to work my flashlight.

"Then I ran back to Beaumont. He held out his hand to show me that he had
his pistol and I nodded, but whispered to him not to be too quick to
shoot, as there might be some silly practical joking at work, after all.
He had got a lamp from a bracket in the upper hall which he was holding
in the crook of his damaged arm, so that we had a good light. Then we
went down the passage toward the billiard room and you can imagine that
we were a pretty nervous couple.

"All this time there had not been a sound, but abruptly when we were
within perhaps a couple of yards of the door we heard the sudden clumping
of a hoof on the solid _parquet_ floor of the billiard room. In the
instant afterward it seemed to me that the whole place shook beneath the
ponderous hoof falls of some huge thing, _coming toward the door_. Both
Beaumont and I gave back a pace or two, and then realized and hung on to
our courage, as you might say, and waited. The great tread came right up
to the door and then stopped and there was an instant of absolute
silence, except that so far as I was concerned, the pulsing in my throat
and temples almost deafened me.

"I dare say we waited quite half a minute and then came the further
restless clumping of a great hoof. Immediately afterward the sounds came
right on as if some invisible thing passed through the closed door and
the pondero