rush of terror.

For it appeared, so far as Mrs. Nugent could afterwards make it out,
as if a sort of double process went on. It was not merely that Fear,
full-armed, rushed upon with the approaching wheels, outside and
therefore harmless; but that the room itself in which she crouched,
itself filled with some atmosphere, swift as water in a rising lock,
that held her there motionless, blind and dumb with horror, unable to
move, even to lift her hands or turn her head. As one approached, the
other rose.

Again sounded the hoofs and wheels, near now and imminent. Again they
hushed as the corner was approached. Then once more, as they broke
out, clear and distinct, not twenty yards away at the turning into the
village, Mrs. Nugent, no longer able even to keep that rigid position
of fear, sank gently backwards and relapsed in a huddle on the floor.

II

Mr. Nugent was astonished and even a little peevish when, on arriving
home after dark, he found the parlor lamp a-smoke and his wife absent.

He inquired for her; the mistress had slipped upstairs scarcely ten
minutes ago. He shouted at the bottom of the stairs, but there was no
response. And after he had taken his boots off, and his desire for
supper had become poignant, he himself stepped upstairs to see into
the matter....

It was several minutes, even after the conveyal of an apparently
inanimate body downstairs, before his wife first made clear signs of
intelligence; and even these were little more than grotesque
expressions of fear--rolling eyes and exclamations. It was another
quarter of an hour before any kind of connected story could be got out
of her. One conclusion only was evident, that Mrs. Nugent did not
propose to fetch the forgotten candle still burning on the
cloth-covered, brass-nailed table, but that it must be fetched
instantly; the door locked on the outside, and the key laid before her
on that tablecloth. These were the terms that must be conceded before
any further details were gone into.

Plainly there was but one person to carry out these instructions, for
the little servant-maid was already all eyes and mouth at the few
pregnant sentences that had fallen from her mistress's lips. So
Mr. Nugent himself, cloth cap and all, stepped upstairs once more.

He paused at the door and looked in.

All was entirely as usual. In spite of the unpleasant expectancy
roused, in spite of himself and his godliness, by the words of his
wife and her awful