d for and in a manner used, the dismal influence which had
pervaded the place ever since his death had, under the sensations I have
mentioned, deepened into horror and an unspeakable repugnance.

Yet never having had any reason to believe myself a coward, I took
boldly enough the few steps necessary to carry me inside its dismal
precincts; and meeting with nothing but darkness and silence, began to
whistle again for the dog I had certainly seen enter here.

But no dog appeared.

Hastening out, I took my way toward the stables. As I did so I glanced
back, and again, my eyes fell on that place in the wall gleaming white
in the moonlight. Again I felt the chill, the horror! Again my eyes
remained glued to this one spot; and again I beheld the passing of that
dog, running with jaws extended and, head held low--fearsome, uncanny,
supernaturally horrible; a thing to flee from, if one could only flee
instead of standing stock-still on the sward, gazing with eyes that
seemed starting from their sockets till it had plunged through that gap
in the wall and again disappeared.

The occult and the imaginary have never appealed to me, and the moment I
felt myself a man again, I hurried on to the stables to call up my man
Jared.

But half-way there I paused, struck by an odd remembrance. This father
of mine, Philo Ocumpaugh, had died, or so his old servants had said,
under peculiar circumstances. I had forgotten them till now--such
stories make poor headway with me--but if I was not mistaken, the facts
were these:

He had been ailing long, and his nurses had got used to the sight of his
gaunt, white figure sitting propped up, but speechless, in the great bed
opposite the stretch of blank wall in the corner bedroom, where a
picture of his first wife, the wife of his youth, had once hung, but
which, for some years now, had been removed to where there were fewer
shadows and more sunlight. He had never been a talkative man, and in all
the five years of my own memory of him, I had never heard him raise his
voice except in command, or when the duties of hospitality required it.
Now, with the shadow of death upon him, he was absolutely speechless,
and his nurses were obliged to guess at his wishes by the movement of
his hands or the direction of his eyes. Yet he was not morose, and
sometimes was seen to struggle with the guards holding his tongue, as
though he would fain have loosed himself from their inexorable control.
Yet he never