moment was lost while they got a poker and broke
it open. Then the creature had already escaped through the window, and
the sister, bleeding violently from a wound in the throat, was lying
unconscious over the side of the bed. One brother pursued the creature,
which fled before him through the moonlight with gigantic strides, and
eventually seemed to disappear over the wall into the churchyard. Then
he rejoined his brother by the sister's bedside. She was dreadfully
hurt, and her wound was a very definite one; but she was of strong
disposition, not either given to romance or superstition, and when she
came to herself she said, 'What has happened is most extraordinary, and
I am very much hurt. It seems inexplicable, but of course there is an
explanation, and we must wait for it. It will turn out that a lunatic
has escaped from some asylum and found his way here.' The wound healed,
and she appeared to get well, but the doctor who was sent for would not
believe that she could bear so terrible a shock so easily, and insisted
that she must have change, mental and physical; so her brothers took her
to Switzerland.

"Being a sensible girl, when she went abroad she threw herself at once
into the interests of the country she was in. She dried plants, she made
sketches, she went up mountains, and, as autumn came on, she was the
person who urged that they should return to Croglin Grange. 'We have
taken it,' she said, 'for seven years, and we have only been there one;
and we shall always find it difficult to let a house which is only one
story high, so we had better return there; lunatics do not escape every
day.' As she urged it, her brothers wished nothing better, and the
family returned to Cumberland. From there being no upstairs to the house
it was impossible to make any great change in their arrangements. The
sister occupied the same room, but it is unnecessary to say she always
closed her shutters, which, however, as in many old houses, always left
one top pane of the window uncovered. The brothers moved, and occupied a
room together, exactly opposite that of their sister, and they always
kept loaded pistols in their room.

"The winter passed most peacefully and happily. In the following March
the sister was suddenly awakened by a sound she remembered only too
well--scratch, scratch, scratch upon the window, and, looking up, she
saw quite clearly in the topmost pane of the window the same hideous
brown shrivelled face, with