ver came. He was brushed past as by a somnambulist,
without greeting or question, though to accomplish it the other in
the narrow stairway had to rub clothes with him. Something utterly
unexpected in the apparition smote him with surprise and
apprehension. It was as if he had encountered something groping in a
mausoleum--something startling to the superstitious instinct, though not
terrific in a material way. When it passed he stood speechless on the
stair, looking down into the profound black, troubled with amazement,
full of speculation. All the suspicions that he had felt last night,
when the signal-calls rose below the turret and the door had opened
and the flageolet had disturbed his slumbers, came back to him more
sinister, more compelling than before. He listened to the declining
footfall of that silent mystery; a whisper floated upwards, a door
creaked, no more than that, and yet the effect was wildly disturbing,
even to a person of the _sang froid_ of Montaiglon.

At a bound he went up to his chamber and lit a candle, and stood a
space on the floor, lost in thought. When he looked at his face, half
unconscious that he did so, in a little mirror on a table, he saw
revealed there no coward terrors, but assuredly alarm. He smiled at his
pallid image, tugged in Gascon manner at his moustache, and threw out
his chest; then his sense of humour came to him, and he laughed at the
folly of his perturbation. But he did not keep the mood long.

"My _sans culottes_ surely do not share the hospitality of Doom with
me in its owner's absence," he reflected. "And yet, and yet--! I owe
Bethune something for the thrill of the experiences he has introduced me
to. Now I comprehend the affection of those weeping exiles for the
very plain and commonplace life of France they profess to think so
indifferent a country compared with this they have left behind. A week
of these ghosts would drive me to despair. To-morrow--to-morrow--M. de
Montaiglon--to-morrow you make your reluctant adieux to Doom and its
inexplicable owner, whose surprise and innuendo are altogether too
exciting for your good health."

So he promised himself as he walked up and down the floor of his
chamber, feeling himself in a cage, yet unable to think how he was
to better his condition without the aid of the host whose mysteries
disturbed so much by the suspicions they aroused. Bethune had told him
Lamond, in spite of his politics and his comparative poverty, was o