it gave to her nerves. She never can be
brought to refer to it, naturally, and I am even inclined to think that
the memory has mercifully been permitted to vanish from her mind. But
she spoke of it at the time as a face swept by flame--blasted."

John Silence looked up from his contemplation of the map, but with the
air of one who wished to listen, not to speak, and presently Colonel
Wragge went on with his account. He stood on the mat, his broad
shoulders hiding most of the mantelpiece.

"They all centred about this particular plantation, these stories. That
was to be expected, for the people here are as superstitious as Irish
peasantry, and though I made one or two examples among them to stop the
foolish talk, it had no effect, and new versions came to my ears every
week. You may imagine how little good dismissals did, when I tell you
that the servants dismissed themselves. It was not the house servants,
but the men who worked on the estate outside. The keepers gave notice
one after another, none of them with any reason I could accept; the
foresters refused to enter the wood, and the beaters to beat in it. Word
flew all over the countryside that Twelve Acre Plantation was a place to
be avoided, day or night.

"There came a point," the Colonel went on, now well in his swing, "when
I felt compelled to make investigations on my own account. I could not
kill the thing by ignoring it; so I collected and analysed the stories
at first hand. For this Twelve Acre Wood, you will see by the map, comes
rather near home. Its lower end, if you will look, almost touches the
end of the back lawn, as I will show you tomorrow, and its dense growth
of pines forms the chief protection the house enjoys from the east winds
that blow up from the sea. And in olden days, before my brother
interfered with it and frightened all the game away, it was one of the
best pheasant coverts on the whole estate."

"And what form, if I may ask, did this interference take?" asked Dr.
Silence.

"In detail, I cannot tell you, for I do not know--except that I
understand it was the subject of his frequent differences with the head
keeper; but during the last two years of his life, when he gave up
travelling and settled down here, he took a special interest in this
wood, and for some unaccountable reason began to build a low stone wall
around it. This wall was never finished, but you shall see the ruins
tomorrow in the daylight."

"And the result of you