arms intently listened--he knew not
why. There in the black darkness by the side of the dead, recalling all
without a shock, he strained his eyes to see--he knew not what. His
senses were all alert, his breath was suspended, his blood had stilled
its tides as if to assist the silence. Who--what had waked him, and
where was it?

Suddenly the table shook beneath his arms, and at the same moment he
heard, or fancied that he heard, a light, soft step--another--sounds as
of bare feet upon the floor!

He was terrified beyond the power to cry out or move. Perforce he
waited--waited there in the darkness through seeming centuries of such
dread as one may know, yet live to tell. He tried vainly to speak the
dead woman's name, vainly to stretch forth his hand across the table to
learn if she were there. His throat was powerless, his arms and hands
were like lead. Then occurred something most frightful. Some heavy body
seemed hurled against the table with an impetus that pushed it against
his breast so sharply as nearly to overthrow him, and at the same
instant he heard and felt the fall of something upon the floor with so
violent a thump that the whole house was shaken by the impact. A
scuffling ensued, and a confusion of sounds impossible to describe.
Murlock had risen to his feet. Fear had by excess forfeited control of
his faculties. He flung his hands upon the table. Nothing was there!

There is a point at which terror may turn to madness; and madness
incites to action. With no definite intent, from no motive but the
wayward impulse of a madman, Murlock sprang to the wall, with a little
groping seized his loaded rifle, and without aim discharged it. By the
flash which lit up the room with a vivid illumination, he saw an
enormous panther dragging the dead woman toward the window, its teeth
fixed in her throat! Then there were darkness blacker than before, and
silence; and when he returned to consciousness the sun was high and the
wood vocal with songs of birds.

The body lay near the window, where the beast had left it when
frightened away by the flash and report of the rifle. The clothing was
deranged, the long hair in disorder, the limbs lay anyhow. From the
throat, dreadfully lacerated, had issued a pool of blood not yet
entirely coagulated. The ribbon with which he had bound the wrists was
broken; the hands were tightly clenched. Between the teeth was a
fragment of the animal's ear.

A LADY FROM REDHORSE

COR