, streaked walls.

"There's a flashlight, Carlos," Bobby said, "in the door flap of the
automobile."

Paredes started across the yard with a haste, it seemed to Bobby,
almost eager.

Striking matches as they went, the doctor and Bobby hurried to the front
of the house. The rooms appeared undisturbed in their decay. The shutters
were closed. The front door was barred. The broken walls from which the
plaster hung in shreds leered at them.

Suddenly Bobby turned, grasping the doctor's arm.

"Did you hear anything?"

The doctor shook his head.

"Or feel anything?"

"No."

"I thought," Bobby said excitedly, "that there was some one in the
hall. I--I simply got that impression, for I saw nothing myself. My
back was turned."

Paredes strolled silently in.

"It may have been Mr. Paredes," the doctor said.

But Bobby wasn't convinced.

"Did you see or hear anything coming through the hall, Carlos?"

"No," Paredes said.

He had brought the light. With its help they explored the tiny cellar and
the upper floor. There was no sign of a recent occupancy. Everything was
as Bobby had found it on awakening. A vagrant wind sighed about the
place. They looked at each other with startled eyes. They filed out with
an incongruous stealth.

"Then there are ghosts here, too!" Paredes whispered.

"Who knows?" Doctor Groom mused. "It is as puzzling as anything that has
happened at the Cedars unless the light we saw was some phosphorescent
effect of decaying wood or vegetation."

"Then why should it go out all at once?" Bobby asked. "Is there any
connection between this light and what has happened at the Cedars?"

"The house at least," Paredes put in, "is connected with what has
happened at the Cedars through your experience here."

At Doctor Groom's suggestion they sat in the automobile for some time,
watching the house for a repetition of the pallid light. After several
minutes, when it failed to come, Bobby set his gears.

"Graham and Katherine will be worried."

They drove quickly away from the black, uncommunicative mass of the
abandoned building. The woods were lonelier than before. They impressed
Bobby as guarding something.

He drove straight to the stable. As they walked into the court they saw
the uncertain candlelight diffused from the room of death. In the hall
Bobby responded to a quick alarm. The Cedars was too quiet. What had
happened since he and Paredes had left?

"Katherine! Hartley!" he called.