ey
shawl made a grotesque human effigy.

I sat back in the low wicker chair and surveyed the hallway. Why not, I
considered, do away now with the fear of it? If I could conquer it like
this at midnight, I need never succumb again to it in the light.

The cat leaped to the stand beside me and stood there, waiting. He was
an intelligent animal, and I am like a good many spinsters. I am not
more fond of cats than other people, but I understand them better. And
it seemed to me that he and I were going through some familiar program,
of which a part had been neglected. The cat neither sat nor lay, but
stood there, waiting.

So at last I fetched the shawl from the rack and made him a bed on
the stand. It was what he had been waiting for. I saw that at once. He
walked onto it, turned around once, lay down, and closed his eyes.

I took up my vigil. I had been the victim of a fear I was determined to
conquer. The house was quiet. Maggie had retired shriveled to bed. The
cat slept on the shawl.

And then--I felt the fear returning. It welled up through my
tranquillity like a flood, and swept me with it. I wanted to shriek. I
was afraid to shriek. I longed to escape. I dared not move. There had
been no sound, no motion. Things were as they had been.

It may have been one minute or five that I sat there. I do not know.
I only know that I sat with fixed eyes, not even blinking, for fear of
even for a second shutting out the sane and visible world about me. A
sense of deadness commenced in my hands and worked up my arms. My chest
seemed flattened.

Then the telephone bell rang.

The cat leaped to his feet. Somehow I reached forward and took down the
receiver.

"Who is it?" I cried, in a voice that was thin, I knew, and unnatural.

The telephone is not a perfect medium. It loses much that we wish
to register but, also, it registers much that we may wish to lose.
Therefore when I say that I distinctly heard a gasp, followed by heavy
difficult breathing, over the telephone, I must beg for credence. It is
true. Some one at the other end of the line was struggling for breath.

Then there was complete silence. I realized, after a moment, that the
circuit had been stealthily cut, and that my conviction was verified
by Central's demand, a moment later, of what number I wanted. I was, at
first, unable to answer her. When I did speak, my voice was shaken.

"What number, please?" she repeated, in a bored tone. There is
nothing in