blew
coldly on her face. The lamp on the kitchen table sent up a straight
tongue of flame in the draught, and also went out. As she stood there with
straining eyes a cry rang out overhead, followed in a space immeasurable
to the listener in the gulf of blackness, by a shattering sound which
seemed to shake the house to its foundations. Then the external blackness
entered her own soul, shrouding her consciousness like the sudden swift
fall of a curtain.

CHAPTER VIII

It seemed a long wild journey in the dark, but actually only half an hour
passed before the car emerged from the wind and rain of the moors into the
dimly-lighted stone street of the churchtown. A few minutes later the car
stopped, and the driver informed Mr. and Mrs. Pendleton in a Cornish drawl
that they had reached Dr. Ravenshaw's.

Husband and wife emerged from the car and discerned a square stone house
lying back from the road behind a white fence. They walked up the path
from the gate and rang the bell.

A rugged and freckled servant lass answered the ring, and stared hard at
the visitors from a pair of Cornish brown eyes. On learning their names
she conducted them into a small room off the hall and departed to inform
the doctor of their arrival.

Dr. Ravenshaw came in immediately. The quick glance he bestowed upon his
visitors expressed surprise, but he merely invited them to be seated and
waited for them to explain the object of their late visit. The room into
which they had been shown was his consulting room, furnished in the
simplest fashion--almost shabbily. There were chairs and table and a
couch, a small stand for a pile of magazines, a bookcase containing some
medical works, and a sprawling hare's-foot fern in a large flowerpot by
the window. Mr. Pendleton seated himself near the fern, examining it as
though it was a botanical rarity, and left his wife to undertake the
conversation. Mrs. Pendleton was accustomed to take the lead, and
immediately commenced--

"I have taken the liberty of coming to ask your advice about my niece,
doctor. You heard what my brother said this afternoon?"

Dr. Ravenshaw inclined his head without speaking, and waited for her to
continue.

"As you are a friend of my brother's--"

"Hardly a friend," he interrupted, with a gesture of dissent. "Our
acquaintance is really too short to warrant that term."

There was a professional formality about his tone which pulled her up
short. Like all impulsive p