t to know it made me the keener to know it all, even the worst.

Shorthouse realised this even better than I did. I could tell it by the
way he dodged, or wholly ignored, my questions, and this subtle sympathy
between us showed plainly enough, had I been able at the time to reflect
upon its meaning, that the nerves of both of us were in a very sensitive
and highly-strung condition. Probably, the complete confidence I felt in
his ability to face whatever might happen, and the extent to which also
I relied upon him for my own courage, prevented the exercise of my
ordinary powers of reflection, while it left my senses free to a more
than usual degree of activity.

Things must have gone on in this way for a good hour or more, when I
made the sudden discovery that there was something unusual in the
conditions of our environment. This sounds a roundabout mode of
expression, but I really know not how else to put it. The discovery
almost rushed upon me. By rights, we were two men waiting in an alleged
haunted barn for something to happen; and, as two men who trusted one
another implicitly (though for very different reasons), there should
have been two minds keenly alert, with the ordinary senses in active
co-operation. Some slight degree of nervousness, too, there might also
have been, but beyond this, nothing. It was therefore with something of
dismay that I made the sudden discovery that there _was_ something more,
and something that I ought to have noticed very much sooner than I
actually did notice it.

The fact was--Shorthouse's stream of talk was wholly unnatural. He was
talking with a purpose. He did not wish to be cornered by my questions,
true, but he had another and a deeper purpose still, and it grew upon
me, as an unpleasant deduction from my discovery, that this strong,
cynical, unemotional man by my side was talking--and had been talking
all this time--to gain a particular end. And this end, I soon felt
clearly, was to _convince himself_. But, of what?

For myself, as the hours wore on towards midnight, I was not anxious to
find the answer; but in the end it became impossible to avoid it, and I
knew as I listened, that he was pouring forth this steady stream of
vivid reminiscences of travel--South Seas, big game, Russian
exploration, women, adventures of all sorts--_because he wished the past
to reassert itself to the complete exclusion of the present_. He was
taking his precautions. He was afraid.

I felt a