ck when our host suggested going out with the
guns, these, we understood, being a somewhat thin disguise for our true
purpose. Personally, I was glad to be in the open air, for the
atmosphere of the house was heavy with presentiment. The sense of
impending disaster hung over all. Fear stalked the passages, and lurked
in the corners of every room. It was a house haunted, but really
haunted; not by some vague shadow of the dead, but by a definite though
incalculable influence that was actively alive, and dangerous. At the
least smell of smoke the entire household quivered. An odour of burning,
I was convinced, would paralyse all the inmates. For the servants,
though professedly ignorant by the master's unspoken orders, yet shared
the common dread; and the hideous uncertainty, joined with this display
of so spiteful and calculated a spirit of malignity, provided a kind of
black doom that draped not only the walls, but also the minds of the
people living within them.

Only the bright and cheerful vision of old Miss Wragge being pushed
about the house in her noiseless chair, chatting and nodding briskly to
every one she met, prevented us from giving way entirely to the
depression which governed the majority. The sight of her was like a
gleam of sunshine through the depths of some ill-omened wood, and just
as we went out I saw her being wheeled along by her attendant into the
sunshine of the back lawn, and caught her cheery smile as she turned her
head and wished us good sport.

The morning was October at its best. Sunshine glistened on the
dew-drenched grass and on leaves turned golden-red. The dainty
messengers of coming hoar-frost were already in the air, a search for
permanent winter quarters. From the wide moors that everywhere swept up
against the sky, like a purple sea splashed by the occasional grey of
rocky clefts, there stole down the cool and perfumed wind of the west.
And the keen taste of the sea ran through all like a master-flavour,
borne over the spaces perhaps by the seagulls that cried and circled
high in the air.

But our host took little interest in this sparkling beauty, and had no
thought of showing off the scenery of his property. His mind was
otherwise intent, and, for that matter, so were our own.

"Those bleak moors and hills stretch unbroken for hours," he said, with
a sweep of the hand; "and over there, some four miles," pointing in
another direction, "lies S---- Bay, a long, swampy inlet of th