ad already been laid, and out on
to the terrace. The rain for the moment had been utterly stayed, as if
the tap of the heavens had been turned off, and under the lowering
black sky, not quite dark, since the moon rode somewhere serene behind
the conglomerated thunder-clouds, Darcy stumbled into the garden,
followed by the servant with the candle. The monstrous leaping shadow
of himself was cast before him on the lawn; lost and wandering odours
of rose and lily and damp earth were thick about him, but more pungent
was some sharp and acrid smell that suddenly reminded him of a certain
chalet in which he had once taken refuge in the Alps. In the blackness
of the hazy light from the sky, and the vague tossing of the candle
behind him, he saw that the hammock in which Frank so often lay was
tenanted. A gleam of white shirt was there, as if a man sitting up in
it, but across that there was an obscure dark shadow, and as he
approached the acrid odour grew more intense.

He was now only some few yards away, when suddenly the black shadow
seemed to jump into the air, then came down with tappings of hard hoofs
on the brick path that ran down the pergola, and with frolicsome
skippings galloped off into the bushes. When that was gone Darcy could
see quite clearly that a shirted figure sat up in the hammock. For one
moment, from sheer terror of the unseen, he hung on his step, and the
servant joining him they walked together to the hammock.

It was Frank. He was in shirt and trousers only, and he sat up with
braced arms. For one half second he stared at them, his face a mask of
horrible contorted terror. His upper lip was drawn back so that the
gums of the teeth appeared, and his eyes were focused not on the two
who approached him but on something quite close to him; his nostrils
were widely expanded, as if he panted for breath, and terror incarnate
and repulsion and deathly anguish ruled dreadful lines on his smooth
cheeks and forehead. Then even as they looked the body sank backward,
and the ropes of the hammock wheezed and strained.

Darcy lifted him out and carried him indoors. Once he thought there was
a faint convulsive stir of the limbs that lay with so dead a weight in
his arms, but when they got inside there was no trace of life. But the
look of supreme terror and agony of fear had gone from his face, a boy
tired with play but still smiling in his sleep was the burden he laid
on the floor. His eyes closed, and the beautif