of a woman's voice; but what woman can be abroad on such
a night or at such an hour--half-past one in the morning?

There it is again--a dreadful sound; it makes the blood turn chill, and
yet has something familiar about it. It is a woman's voice calling round
the house. There, she is at the window now, and rattling it, and, great
heavens! she is calling me.

"Frank! Frank! Frank!" she calls.

I strive to stir and unshutter that window, but before I can get there
she is knocking and calling at another.

Gone again, with her dreadful wail of "Frank! Frank!" Now I hear her at
the front door, and, half mad with a horrible fear, I run down the long,
dark hall and unbar it. There is nothing there--nothing but the wild
rush of the wind and the drip of the rain from the portico. But I
can hear the wailing voice going round the house, past the patch of
shrubbery. I close the door and listen. There, she has got through the
little yard, and is at the back door now. Whoever it is, she must know
the way about the house. Along the hall I go again, through a swing
door, through the servants' hall, stumbling down some steps into the
kitchen, where the embers of the fire are still alive in the grate,
diffusing a little warmth and light into the dense gloom.

Whoever it is at the door is knocking now with her clenched hand against
the hard wood, and it is wonderful, though she knocks so low, how the
sound echoes through the empty kitchens.

* * * * *

There I stood and hesitated, trembling in every limb; I dared not open
the door. No words of mine can convey the sense of utter desolation that
overpowered me. I felt as though I were the only living man in the whole
world.

"_Frank! Frank!_" cries the voice with the dreadful familiar ring in it.
"Open the door; I am so cold. I have so little time."

My heart stood still, and yet my hands were constrained to obey. Slowly,
slowly I lifted the latch and unbarred the door, and, as I did so, a
great rush of air snatched it from my hands and swept it wide. The black
clouds had broken a little overhead, and there was a patch of blue,
rain-washed sky with just a star or two glimmering in it fitfully. For
a moment I could only see this bit of sky, but by degrees I made out the
accustomed outline of the great trees swinging furiously against it,
and the rigid line of the coping of the garden wall beneath them. Then a
whirling leaf hit me smartly on the face, and instinctively I dropped
m