d over and softly opened the window which gave
upon the courtyard and also permitted a partial view of the hall through
the glass doors.

As he did so the hum and murmur of a great activity reached his ears
from the streets beyond--the sound of footsteps and voices muffled by
distance. He leaned out cautiously and listened. The moonlight was clear
and strong now, but his own window was in shadow, the silver disc being
still behind the house. It came to him irresistibly that the inhabitants
of the town, who a little while before had all been invisible behind
closed doors, were now issuing forth, busy upon some secret and unholy
errand. He listened intently.

At first everything about him was silent, but soon he became aware of
movements going on in the house itself. Rustlings and cheepings came to
him across that still, moonlit yard. A concourse of living beings sent
the hum of their activity into the night. Things were on the move
everywhere. A biting, pungent odour rose through the air, coming he knew
not whence. Presently his eyes became glued to the windows of the
opposite wall where the moonshine fell in a soft blaze. The roof
overhead, and behind him, was reflected clearly in the panes of glass,
and he saw the outlines of dark bodies moving with long footsteps over
the tiles and along the coping. They passed swiftly and silently, shaped
like immense cats, in an endless procession across the pictured glass,
and then appeared to leap down to a lower level where he lost sight of
them. He just caught the soft thudding of their leaps. Sometimes their
shadows fell upon the white wall opposite, and then he could not make
out whether they were the shadows of human beings or of cats. They
seemed to change swiftly from one to the other. The transformation
looked horribly real, for they leaped like human beings, yet changed
swiftly in the air immediately afterwards, and dropped like animals.

The yard, too, beneath him, was now alive with the creeping movements of
dark forms all stealthily drawing towards the porch with the glass
doors. They kept so closely to the wall that he could not determine
their actual shape, but when he saw that they passed on to the great
congregation that was gathering in the hall, he understood that these
were the creatures whose leaping shadows he had first seen reflected in
the windowpanes opposite. They were coming from all parts of the town,
reaching the appointed meeting-place across the roo