n?'

Remembering, not only what his brother Francis had felt in the room
beneath, but what the experience of Agnes had been on the previous
night, Henry was determined to be on his guard. 'I am as much
surprised as you are,' was his only reply.

'Wait for me one moment, sir,' said the manager. 'I must stop the
ladies and gentlemen outside from coming in.'

He hurried away--not forgetting to close the door after him. Henry
opened the window, and waited there breathing the purer air. Vague
apprehensions of the next discovery to come, filled his mind for the
first time. He was doubly resolved, now, not to stir a step in the
investigation without a witness.

The manager returned with a wax taper in his hand, which he lighted as
soon as he entered the room.

'We need fear no interruption now,' he said. 'Be so kind, Mr.
Westwick, as to hold the light. It is my business to find out what
this extraordinary discovery means.'

Henry held the taper. Looking into the cavity, by the dim and
flickering light, they both detected a dark object at the bottom of it.
'I think I can reach the thing,' the manager remarked, 'if I lie down,
and put my hand into the hole.'

He knelt on the floor--and hesitated. 'Might I ask you, sir, to give
me my gloves?' he said. 'They are in my hat, on the chair behind you.'

Henry gave him the gloves. 'I don't know what I may be going to take
hold of,' the manager explained, smiling rather uneasily as he put on
his right glove.

He stretched himself at full length on the floor, and passed his right
arm into the cavity. 'I can't say exactly what I have got hold of,' he
said. 'But I have got it.'

Half raising himself, he drew his hand out.

The next instant, he started to his feet with a shriek of terror. A
human head dropped from his nerveless grasp on the floor, and rolled to
Henry's feet. It was the hideous head that Agnes had seen hovering
above her, in the vision of the night!

The two men looked at each other, both struck speechless by the same
emotion of horror. The manager was the first to control himself. 'See
to the door, for God's sake!' he said. 'Some of the people outside may
have heard me.'

Henry moved mechanically to the door.

Even when he had his hand on the key, ready to turn it in the lock in
case of necessity, he still looked back at the appalling object on the
floor. There was no possibility of identifying those decayed and
distorted features with any living creature