he candle again, and began another search.
Nothing was to be seen; but she had now the curious sense of an unseen
presence. She went to the door, opened it, and looked out into the
narrow hall. Nothing was to be seen there. Then she closed the door
again, and stood looking at it meditatively for a moment. It had a lock
and key; yet it had never been locked in the years they had lived on the
Sagalac. She did not know whether the key would turn in the lock. After
a moment's hesitation, she shrugged her shoulders and turned the key.
It rasped, proved stubborn, but at last came home with a click. Then she
turned to the window. It was open about three inches at the bottom. She
closed it tight, and fastened it, then stood for a moment in the middle
of the room looking at both door and window.

She was conscious of a sense of suffocation. Never in her life had she
slept with door or window or tentflap entirely closed. Never before had
she been shut in all night behind closed doors and sealed windows. Now,
as the sense of imprisonment was felt, her body protested; her spirit
resented the funereal embrace of security. It panted for the freedom
which gives the challenge to danger and the courage to face it.

She went to the window and opened it slightly at the top, and then
sought her bed again; but even as she lay down, something whispered to
her mind that it was folly to lock the door and yet leave the window
open, if it was but an inch. With an exclamation of self-reproach, and
a vague indignation at something, she got up and closed the window once
more.

Again she composed herself to sleep, lying now with her face turned to
the window and the door. She was still sure that she had been the victim
of a hallucination which, emerging from her sleep, had invaded the
borders of wakefulness, and then had reproduced itself in a waking
illusion--an imitation of its original existence.

Resolved to conquer any superstitious feeling, she invoked sleep, and
was on its borders once more when she was startled more violently than
before.

The Thing had sprung again upon her feet and was crouched there. Wide
awake, she waited for a moment to make sure that she was not mad, or
that she was not asleep or in a half-dream. In the pause, she felt the
Thing draw up towards her knees, dragging its body along with tiger-like
closeness, and with that strange pressure which was not weight but
power.

With a cry which was no longer doubt, but ag