s entrance she sprang erect, facing him.

"It came," she gasped. "Oh, I knew it would. All along I've known."

"Tell me what's happened," Garth commanded.

The woman's voice was scarcely intelligible.

"I let him sleep here. Just now he groaned. I ran in.
Somebody--something had attacked him. I ran in. I--I saw it."

"Where?"

She pointed to the rear window.

"I saw it going out there. It was foggy. It went in the fog. I
couldn't--"

Garth sprang to the window. It was, in fact, half open. Before he could
get through Mrs. Alden had caught his arm.

"Don't follow. It isn't safe out there."

"I want that man," he said.

She leaned weakly against the casement.

"But out there," she whispered, "they are not men."

Again she caught his arm.

"Don't leave me alone now that they can come in."

She pointed at her husband.

"Look at him. He saw it in the fog that came through the window. It is
all fog out there. Don't leave me alone."

He thrust the revolver impatiently in her hand.

"Then take this. Not much use outside on such a night."

He jumped to the lawn and started swiftly across. Since the intruder had
fled this way he might hear him in the woods, might grapple with him. He
regretted the loss of his revolver, although he realized it would be
useless to-night except at close quarters, and for that he possessed a
cleverly-devised reserve, which he had arranged on first joining the
force--a folding knife, hidden in his belt, sharp, well-tested, deadly.

At the edge of the woods he paused, straining his ears, trying to get
his bearings, for he was on unfamiliar ground and the fog was very dense
here. It lowered a white, translucent shroud over the nocturnal
landscape. Beneath its folds he could make out only one or two tree
trunks and a few drooping branches. These, as he stared, gave him the
illusion of moving surreptitiously.

The moon, he knew, was at the full, but its golden rotundity was heavily
veiled to-night, so that it had the forlorn, the sorrowful appearance of
a lamp, once brilliant, whose flame has gradually diminished and is
about to expire.

Garth could hear nothing, but he waited breathlessly, still straining
his ears. This, he mused, was the place where many soldiers had died in
battle, the setting for ghostly legends, the spot where the servants had
fancied a terrifying and bodiless re-animation, the death-bed of Alden's
valet.

Now that he had time to weigh it, Mrs. Alden's ma