my left, and Dr. Silence on my right, both half facing
me, the latter more in shadow than the former. We thus divided the
little table into even sections, and sitting back in our chairs we
awaited events in silence.

For something like an hour I do not think there was even the faintest
sound within those four walls and under the canopy of that vaulted roof.
Our slippers made no scratching on the gritty floor, and our breathing
was suppressed almost to nothing; even the rustle of our clothes as we
shifted from time to time upon our seats was inaudible. Silence
smothered us absolutely--the silence of night, of listening, the silence
of a haunted expectancy. The very gurgling of the lamps was too soft to
be heard, and if light itself had sound, I do not think we should have
noticed the silvery tread of the moonlight as it entered the high narrow
windows and threw upon the floor the slender traces of its pallid
footsteps.

Colonel Wragge and the doctor, and myself too for that matter, sat thus
like figures of stone, without speech and without gesture. My eyes
passed in ceaseless journeys from the bowl to their faces, and from
their faces to the bowl. They might have been masks, however, for all
the signs of life they gave; and the light steaming from the horrid
contents beneath the white cloth had long ceased to be visible.

Then presently, as the moon rose higher, the wind rose with it. It
sighed, like the lightest of passing wings, over the roof; it crept most
softly round the walls; it made the brick floor like ice beneath our
feet. With it I saw mentally the desolate moorland flowing like a sea
about the old house, the treeless expanse of lonely hills, the nearer
copses, sombre and mysterious in the night. The plantation, too, in
particular I saw, and imagined I heard the mournful whisperings that
must now be a-stirring among its tree-tops as the breeze played down
between the twisted stems. In the depth of the room behind us the shafts
of moonlight met and crossed in a growing network.

It was after an hour of this wearing and unbroken attention, and I
should judge about one o'clock in the morning, when the baying of the
dogs in the stableyard first began, and I saw John Silence move suddenly
in his chair and sit up in an attitude of attention. Every force in my
being instantly leaped into the keenest vigilance. Colonel Wragge moved
too, though slowly, and without raising his eyes from the table before
him.

The