g spoken; and, seeing the light through the chinks and finding
all so quiet, might have been persuaded that only one person was there.

'Some thief or ruffian maybe,' said the locksmith. 'Give me the light.'

'No, no,' she returned hastily. 'Such visitors have never come to this
poor dwelling. Do you stay here. You're within call, at the worst. I
would rather go myself--alone.'

'Why?' said the locksmith, unwillingly relinquishing the candle he had
caught up from the table.

'Because--I don't know why--because the wish is so strong upon me,' she
rejoined. 'There again--do not detain me, I beg of you!'

Gabriel looked at her, in great surprise to see one who was usually so
mild and quiet thus agitated, and with so little cause. She left the
room and closed the door behind her. She stood for a moment as if
hesitating, with her hand upon the lock. In this short interval the
knocking came again, and a voice close to the window--a voice the
locksmith seemed to recollect, and to have some disagreeable association
with--whispered 'Make haste.'

The words were uttered in that low distinct voice which finds its way so
readily to sleepers' ears, and wakes them in a fright. For a moment
it startled even the locksmith; who involuntarily drew back from the
window, and listened.

The wind rumbling in the chimney made it difficult to hear what passed,
but he could tell that the door was opened, that there was the tread of
a man upon the creaking boards, and then a moment's silence--broken by a
suppressed something which was not a shriek, or groan, or cry for help,
and yet might have been either or all three; and the words 'My God!'
uttered in a voice it chilled him to hear.

He rushed out upon the instant. There, at last, was that dreadful
look--the very one he seemed to know so well and yet had never seen
before--upon her face. There she stood, frozen to the ground, gazing
with starting eyes, and livid cheeks, and every feature fixed and
ghastly, upon the man he had encountered in the dark last night. His
eyes met those of the locksmith. It was but a flash, an instant, a
breath upon a polished glass, and he was gone.

The locksmith was upon him--had the skirts of his streaming garment
almost in his grasp--when his arms were tightly clutched, and the widow
flung herself upon the ground before him.

'The other way--the other way,' she cried. 'He went the other way.
Turn--turn!'

'The other way! I see him now,' rejoined the