s the crack of a pistol,
and produced, heaven knows how, but never by daylight.

Even Pinckney, who did not believe in ghosts, became aware as he sat now
by the fire that the old house was feeling for him to make him creep,
feeling for him with its old disjointed fingers and all the artfulness of
inanimate things.

He was aware that Sir Nicholas Berknowles was looking down at him with the
terrible patient gaze of a portrait, and he returned the gaze, trying to
imagine what manner of man this might have been and how he had lived and
what he had done in those old days that were once real sunlit days filled
with people with real voices, hearts, and minds.

A gentle creak as though a light step had pressed upon the flooring of the
hall brought his mind back to reality and he was rising from his chair to
retire for the night when a sound from outside the window made him sit
down again. It was the sound of a step on the gravel path, a step stealthy
and light, a real sound and no contraption of the imagination.

The idea of burglars sprang up in his mind, but was dismissed; that was no
burglar's footstep--and yet! He listened. The sound had ceased and now
came a faint rubbing as of a hand feeling for the window followed by the
sharp rapping of a knuckle on the glass.

"Hullo," cried Pinckney, jumping to his feet and approaching the shuttered
window. "Who's there?"

"It's me," said a voice. "I'm locked out. Byrne's bolted the front door.
Go to the hall door, will you, please, and let me in?"

"Phyl," said Pinckney to himself. "Good heavens!" Then to the other, "I'm
coming."

Byrne had left a lamp lighted in the hall and the guest's candlestick
waiting for him on the table. The lamp was sufficient to show him the
executive side of the big front door that had been nearly battered in in
the time of the Fenians and still possessed the ponderous locks and bars
of a past day when the tenants of Kilgobbin had fought the pikemen of
Arranakilty and Rupert Berknowles had hung seventeen rebels, no less, on
the branches of the big oak "be the gates."

Pinckney undid bolt and bar, turned the key in the great lock and flung
the door open, disclosing Phyl standing in the moonlight. The contrast
between the forbidding and ponderous door and the charming little figure
against which it had stood as a barrier might have struck him had his mind
been less astonished. As it was he could think of nothing but the
strangeness of the business