eparation of my room for the night at an earlier and
yet earlier hour, until at last it was done the moment I was dressed for
dinner.

It is clear to me now that two entirely different sorts of fear actuated
us. For by that time I had to acknowledge that there was fear in the
house. Even Delia, the cook, had absorbed some of Maggie's terror;
possibly traceable to some early impressions of death which connected
them-selves with a four-post bedstead.

Of the two sorts of fear, Delia's and Maggie's symptoms were subjective.
Mine, I still feel, were objective.

It was not long before the beginning of August, and during a lull in
the telephone matter, that I began to suspect that the house was being
visited at night.

There was nothing I could point to with any certainty as having been
disturbed at first. It was a matter of a book misplaced on the table, of
my sewing-basket open when I always leave it closed, of a burnt match on
the floor, whereas it is one of my orderly habits never to leave burnt
matches around. And at last the burnt match became a sort of clue, for I
suspected that it had been used to light one of the candles that sat in
holders of every sort, on the top of the library shelves.

I tried getting up at night and peering over the banisters, but without
result. And I was never sure as to articles that they had been moved.
I remained in that doubting and suspicious halfway ground that is worse
than certainty. And there was the matter of motive. I could not get away
from that. What possible purpose could an intruder have, for instance,
in opening my sewing-basket or moving the dictionary two inches on the
center table?

Yet the feeling persisted, and on the second of August I find this entry
in my journal:

Right-hand brass, eight inches; left-hand brass, seven inches;
carved-wood--Italian--five and three quarter inches each; old glass on
mantelpiece--seven inches. And below this, dated the third: Last night,
between midnight and daylight, the candle in the glass holder on the
right side of the mantel was burned down one and one-half inches.

I should, no doubt, have set a watch on my nightly visitor after making
this discovery--and one that was apparently connected with it--nothing
less than Delia's report that there were candle-droppings over the
border of the library carpet. But I have admitted that this is a study
in fear, and a part of it is my own.

I was afraid. I was afraid of the night visit