f blue and red check lay in a heap on the
floor. A couple of plain Windsor chairs, and a third with arms and a
cushion, a hearth-rug, a fender and fire-irons, completed the furniture
of the room.

And the one window, a small one, which looked out upon the wharf, in a
corner formed by the outhouse on the one side and a shed on the other,
was carefully boarded up.

Grimly desolate the dark, bare room looked, small as it was; and a
couple of rats, which scurried over the floor as Max entered, added a
suggestion of other horrors to the deserted room. The girl had managed
to get behind Max, and he turned sharply with a suspicion that she meant
to shut him into the room by himself.

"It's all right--it's all right," whispered she, reassuringly. "He isn't
in here. But he's there."

And she pointed to the door with the red curtain.

Max stopped. The farther he advanced into this mysterious house the less
he liked the prospect presented to his view. And the girl herself seemed
to have forgotten her pretext of wanting something fetched out of that
mysterious third room. She remained leaning against the wall, close by
the door by which she and Max had entered, still holding the candlestick
and staring at the red curtain with eyes full of terror. Max found his
own eyes fascinated by the steady gaze, and he looked in the same
direction.

Staring intently at the bit of faded stuff, he was almost ready to
imagine, in the silence and gloom of the place, that he saw it move. His
breath came fast. Overcome by the uncanny influences of the dreary place
itself, of the hideous story he had heard, of the girl's white face, Max
began to feel as if the close, cold air of the unused room was like the
touch of clammy fingers on his face.

Even as this consciousness seized upon him, he heard a moan, a sliding
sound, a thud, and the light went suddenly out.

In the first impulse of horror at his position Max uttered a sharp
exclamation, but remained immovable. Indeed, in the darkness, in this
unknown place, to take a step in any direction was impossible. He stood
listening, waiting for some sound, some ray of light, to guide him.

All he heard was the scurrying of the rats as they ran, disturbed by the
noise, across the room and behind the wainscot in the darkness.

At last he turned and tried to find the door by which he had come in. He
found it, and had his hand upon the latch, when his right foot touched
something soft, yielding. He