n reality, from the first
moment of the alarm to that when the loud cracking noise heralded the
destruction of the fastenings of the door, there had elapsed but very
few minutes indeed.

"It opens--it opens," cried the young man.

"Another moment," said the stranger, as he still plied the
crowbar--"another moment, and we shall have free ingress to the chamber.
Be patient."

This stranger's name was Marchdale; and even as he spoke, he succeeded
in throwing the massive door wide open, and clearing the passage to the
chamber.

To rush in with a light in his hand was the work of a moment to the
young man named Henry; but the very rapid progress he made into the
apartment prevented him from observing accurately what it contained, for
the wind that came in from the open window caught the flame of the
candle, and although it did not actually extinguish it, it blew it so
much on one side, that it was comparatively useless as a light.

"Flora--Flora!" he cried.

Then with a sudden bound something dashed from off the bed. The
concussion against him was so sudden and so utterly unexpected, as well
as so tremendously violent, that he was thrown down, and, in his fall,
the light was fairly extinguished.

All was darkness, save a dull, reddish kind of light that now and then,
from the nearly consumed mill in the immediate vicinity, came into the
room. But by that light, dim, uncertain, and flickering as it was, some
one was seen to make for the window.

Henry, although nearly stunned by his fall, saw a figure, gigantic in
height, which nearly reached from the floor to the ceiling. The other
young man, George, saw it, and Mr. Marchdale likewise saw it, as did the
lady who had spoken to the two young men in the corridor when first the
screams of the young girl awakened alarm in the breasts of all the
inhabitants of that house.

The figure was about to pass out at the window which led to a kind of
balcony, from whence there was an easy descent to a garden.

Before it passed out they each and all caught a glance of the side-face,
and they saw that the lower part of it and the lips were dabbled in
blood. They saw, too, one of those fearful-looking, shining, metallic
eyes which presented so terrible an appearance of unearthly ferocity.

No wonder that for a moment a panic seized them all, which paralysed any
exertions they might otherwise have made to detain that hideous form.

But Mr. Marchdale was a man of mature years; he