y were followed by something like
a faint creak or crack, as if the obstacle had either been opened or
had given way. He opened his own bedroom door and listened, but as
he heard talk and laughter all over the lower floors, he had no
reason to fear that a summons would be neglected or the house left
without protection. He went to his open window, looking out over the
frozen pond and the moonlit statue in the middle of their circle of
darkling woods, and listened again. But silence had returned to that
silent place, and, after straining his ears for a considerable time,
he could hear nothing but the solitary hoot of a distant departing
train. Then he reminded himself how many nameless noises can be
heard by the wakeful during the most ordinary night, and shrugging
his shoulders, went wearily to bed.

He awoke suddenly and sat up in bed with his ears filled, as with
thunder, with the throbbing echoes of a rending cry. He remained
rigid for a moment, and then sprang out of bed, throwing on the
loose gown of sacking he had worn all day. He went first to the
window, which was open, but covered with a thick curtain, so that
his room was still completely dark; but when he tossed the curtain
aside and put his head out, he saw that a gray and silver daybreak
had already appeared behind the black woods that surrounded the
little lake, and that was all that he did see. Though the sound had
certainly come in through the open window from this direction, the
whole scene was still and empty under the morning light as under the
moonlight. Then the long, rather lackadaisical hand he had laid on a
window sill gripped it tighter, as if to master a tremor, and his
peering blue eyes grew bleak with fear. It may seem that his emotion
was exaggerated and needless, considering the effort of common sense
by which he had conquered his nervousness about the noise on the
previous night. But that had been a very different sort of noise. It
might have been made by half a hundred things, from the chopping of
wood to the breaking of bottles. There was only one thing in nature
from which could come the sound that echoed through the dark house
at daybreak. It was the awful articulate voice of man; and it was
something worse, for he knew what man.

He knew also that it had been a shout for help. It seemed to him
that he had heard the very word; but the word, short as it was, had
been swallowed up, as if the man had been stifled or snatched away
even a