with an animating shame that nerved her to go on.
She descended the stairs, from the third floor to
the second, from the second to the first, without
trusting herself to pause again within easy reach
of her own room. In another minute, she had
reached the end of the corridor, had crossed the
vestibule, and had entered the drawing-room.
It was only when her grasp was on the heavy
brass handle of the sliding-door— it was only at the
moment before she pushed the door back— that
she waited to take breath. The Banqueting-
Hall was close on the other side of the wooden
partition against which she stood: her excited
imagination felt the death-like chill of it flowing
over her already.

She pushed back the sliding-door a few inches
—and stopped in momentary alarm. When the
admiral had closed it in her presence that day, she
had heard no noise. When old Mazey had opened
it to show her the rooms in the East wing, she
had heard no noise. Now, in the night silence,
she noticed for the first time, that the door made
a sound— a dull, rushing sound, like the wind.

She roused herself, and pushed it farther back
—pushed it half way into the hollow chamber in
the wall constructed to receive it. She advanced
boldly into the gap, and met the night-view of
the Banqueting-Hall, face to face.

The moon was rounding the southern side of
the house. Her paling beams streamed through
the nearer windows, and lay in long strips of
slanting light on the marble pavement of the Hall.
The black shadows of the pediments between
each window, alternating with the strips of light,
heightened the wan glare of the moonshine on the
stone floor. Towards its lower end, the Hall
melted mysteriously into darkness; the ceiling
was lost to view; the yawning fireplace, the
overhanging mantelpiece, the long row of battle-
pictures above, were all swallowed up in night.
But one visible object was discernible, besides
the gleaming windows and the moon-striped floor.
Midway in the last and farthest of the strips of
light, the tripod rose erect on its gaunt black
legs, like a monster called to life by the moon—
a monster rising through the light, and melting
invisibly into the upper shadows of the Hall.
Far and near, all sound lay dead, drowned in the
stagnant cold. The soothing hush of night was
awful here. The deep abysses of darkness hid
abysses of silence more immeasurable still.

She stood motionless in the doorway, with
straining eyes, with straining ears. She looked
for some moving thing, she listened for some
rising sound—and looked and listened in vain.
A quick ceaseless shivering ran through her from
head to foot. The shivering of fear? or the
shivering of cold? The bare doubt roused her
resolute will. " Now," she thought, advancing
a step through the doorway— " or never! I'll
count the strips of moonlight three times over
—and cross the Hall."

"One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three,
four, five. One, two, three, four, five."

As the final number passed her lips, at the
third time of counting, she crossed the Hall.
Looking for nothing, listening for nothing, one
hand holding the candle, the other mechanically
grasping the folds of her dress— she sped ghostlike
down the length of the ghostly place. She
reached the door of the first of the eastern rooms
—opened it— and ran in. The sudden relief of
reaching a refuge, the sudden entrance into a
new atmosphere, overpowered her for the
moment. She had just time to put the candle
safely on a table, before she dropped giddy and
breathless into the nearest chair.

Little by little, she felt the rest quieting her.
In a few minutes, she became conscious of the
triumph of having won her way to the east rooms.
In a few minutes, she was strong enough to rise
from the chair, to take the keys from her pocket,
and to look round her.

The first objects of furniture in the room which
attracted her attention, were an old bureau of
carved oak, and a heavy buhl table with a cabinet
attached. She tried the bureau first: it looked
the likeliest receptacle for papers of the two.
Three of the keys proved to be of a size to enter
the lock—but none of them would turn it. The
bureau was unassailable. She left it, and paused
for a moment to trim the wick of the candle
before she tried the buhl cabinet next.

At the moment when she raised her hand to
the candle, she heard the stillness of the
Banqueting-Hall shudder with the terror of a sound
— a sound, faint and momentary, like the distant
rushing of the wind.

Had the sliding-door in the drawing-room
moved?

Which way had it moved? Had an unknown
hand pushed it back in its socket, farther than
she had pushed it— or pulled it to again, and
closed it? The horror of being shut out all
night, by some undiscoverable agency, from the
life of the house, was stronger in her than the
horror of looking across the Banqueting-Hall.
She made desperately for the door of the room.

It had fallen to silently after her, when she
had come in, but it was not closed. She pulled
it open—and looked.

The sight that met her eyes, rooted her panic-
stricken to the spot.

Close to the first of the row of windows, counting
from the drawing-room, and full in the gleam
of it, she saw a solitary figure. It stood motionless,
rising out of the farthest strip of moonlight
on the floor. As she looked, it suddenly
disappeared. In another instant, she saw it again, in
the second strip of moonlight— lost it again—
saw it in the third strip— lost it once more— and
saw it in the fourth. Moment by moment, it
advanced, now mysteriously lost in the shadow,
now suddenly visible again in the light, until it
reached the fifth and nearest strip of moonlight.
There it paused, and strayed aside slowly to the
middle of the Hall. It stopped at the tripod, and
stood, shivering audibly in the silence, with its
hands raised over the dead ashes, in the action of
warming them at a fire. It turned back again,