question, yet his answer was a long time
coming. His voice, too, sounded strained, and was pitched quite
too high to be natural. But he evidently did not expect me to show
surprise at his manner.

"Look at that window over there!" he cried at last. "That one with
the slightly open shutter! Watch and you will see that shutter move.
There! it creaked; didn't you hear it?"

A growl--it was more like a moan--came from the porch behind us.
Instantly the old gentleman turned and with a gesture as fierce as
it was instinctive, shouted out:

"Be still there! If you haven't the courage to face a blowing
shutter, keep your jaws shut and don't let every fellow who happens
along know what a fool you are. I declare," he maundered on, half
to himself and half to me, "that dog is getting old. He can't be
trusted any more. He forsakes his master just when--" The rest was
lost in his throat which rattled with something more than impatient
anger.

Meanwhile I had been attentively scrutinizing the house thus
pointedly brought to my notice.

I had seen it many times before, but, as it happened, had never
stopped to look at it when the huge trees surrounding it were
shrouded in darkness. The black hollow of its disused portal looked
out from shadows which acquired some of their somberness from the
tragic memories connected with its empty void.

Its aspect was scarcely reassuring. Not that superstition lent its
terrors to the lonely scene, but that through the blank panes of the
window, alternately appearing and disappearing from view as the
shutter pointed out by Uncle David blew to and fro in the wind, I
saw, or was persuaded that I saw, a beam of light which argued an
unknown presence within walls which had so lately been declared
unfit for any man's habitation.

"You are right," I now remarked to the uneasy figure at my side.
"Some one is prowling through the house yonder. Can it possibly be
Mrs. Jeffrey or her husband?"

"At night and with no gas in the house? Hardly."

The words were natural, but the voice was not. Neither was his
manner quite suited to the occasion. Giving him another sly glance,
and marking how uneasily he edged away from me in the darkness, I
cried out more cheerily than he possibly expected:

"I will summon another officer and we three will just slip across
and investigate."

"Not I!" was his violent rejoinder, as he swung open a gate concealed
in the vines behind him. "The Jeffrey