the
direction of the sick-room, came faint sounds of laughter and incoherent
talk that were not things to reassure a mind already half a-tremble, and
I made haste to reach the hall and let myself out through the front
door into the night.

The air was keen and frosty, perfumed with night smells, and exquisitely
fresh; all the million candles of the sky were alight, and a faint
breeze rose and fell with far-away sighings in the tops of the pine
trees. My blood leaped for a moment in the spaciousness of the night,
for the splendid stars brought courage; but the next instant, as I
turned the corner of the house, moving stealthily down the gravel drive,
my spirits sank again ominously. For, yonder, over the funereal plumes
of the Twelve Acre Plantation, I saw the broken, yellow disc of the
half-moon just rising in the east, staring down like some vast Being
come to watch upon the progress of our doom. Seen through the distorting
vapours of the earth's atmosphere, her face looked weirdly unfamiliar,
her usual expression of benignant vacancy somehow a-twist. I slipped
along by the shadows of the wall, keeping my eyes upon the ground.

The laundry-house, as already described, stood detached from the other
offices, with laurel shrubberies crowding thickly behind it, and the
kitchen-garden so close on the other side that the strong smells of soil
and growing things came across almost heavily. The shadows of the
haunted plantation, hugely lengthened by the rising moon behind them,
reached to the very walls and covered the stone tiles of the roof with a
dark pall. So keenly were my senses alert at this moment that I believe
I could fill a chapter with the endless small details of the impression
I received--shadows, odour, shapes, sounds--in the space of the few
seconds I stood and waited before the closed wooden door.

Then I became aware of some one moving towards me through the moonlight,
and the figure of John Silence, without overcoat and bareheaded, came
quickly and without noise to join me. His eyes, I saw at once, were
wonderfully bright, and so marked was the shining pallor of his face
that I could hardly tell when he passed from the moonlight into the
shade.

He passed without a word, beckoning me to follow, and then pushed the
door open, and went in.

The chill air of the place met us like that of an underground vault; and
the brick floor and whitewashed walls, streaked with damp and smoke,
threw back the cold in