It was none the less a nervous and highly strung household that
presently went to bed, and no woman slept without another woman to keep
her company. Sir Walter found himself worn out in mind and body. Mary
made him take his bromide, and he slept without a dream, despite the din
of the great "sou'-wester" and the distant, solemn crash of more than
one great tree thrown upon the lap of mother earth at last.

Before he retired, however, something in the nature of a procession had
escorted the priest to his ordeal. Mr. May donned biretta, surplice,
and stole, for, as he explained, he was to hold a religious service as
sacred and significant as any other rite.

"Lord send him no congregation then," thought Masters.

But, with Sir Walter and Mary, he followed the ministrant, and left him
at the open door of the Grey Room. The electric light shone steadily;
but the storm seemed to beat its fists at the windows, and the leaded
panes shook and chattered. With no bell and candle, but his Bible alone,
Septimus May entered the room, having first made the sign of the Cross
before him; then he turned and bade good-night to all.

"Be of good faith!" were the last words he spoke to them.

Having done so he shut the door, and they heard his voice immediately
uplifted in prayer. They waited a little, and the sound roiled steadily
on. Sir Walter then bade Masters extinguish all the lights and send the
household to bed, though the time was not more than ten o'clock.

As for Masters, the glamour and appeal of those strenuous words at the
dinner-table had now passed, and presently, as he prepared to retire, he
found himself far less confident and assured than his recent words had
implied. He sank slowly from hope to fear, even pictured the worse, and
asked himself what would follow if the worst happened. He believed that
it might mean serious disaster for Sir Walter. If another life were
sacrificed to this unknown peril, and it transpired that his master had
sanctioned what would amount to suicide in the eyes of reason; then he
began to fear that grave trouble must result. Already the burning words
of Septimus May began to cool and sound unreal, and Masters suspected
that, if they were repeated in other ears, which had not heard him utter
them, or seen the fervor of religious earnestness and reverence in which
they had been spoken, this feverish business of exorcising a ghost in
the twentieth century might only awake derision and rece