h, but it was very odd.

By next night I had completed my work at Barwyke. From early morning
till then I was so incessantly occupied and hard-worked, that I had no
time to think over the singular occurrence to which I have just
referred. Behold me, however, at length once more seated at my little
supper-table, having ended a comfortable meal. It had been a sultry day,
and I had thrown one of the large windows up as high as it would go. I
was sitting near it, with my brandy and water at my elbow, looking out
into the dark. There was no moon, and the trees that are grouped about
the house make the darkness round it supernaturally profound on such
nights.

"Tom," said I, so soon as the jug of hot punch I had supplied him with
began to exercise its genial and communicative influence; "you must tell
me who beside your wife and you and myself slept in the house last
night."

Tom, sitting near the door, set down his tumbler, and looked at me
askance, while you might count seven, without speaking a word.

"Who else slept in the house?" he repeated, very deliberately. "Not a
living soul, sir;" and he looked hard at me, still evidently expecting
something more.

"That _is_ very odd," I said, returning his stare, and feeling really a
little odd. "You are sure _you_ were not in my room last night?"

"Not till I came to call you, sir, this morning; I can make oath of
that."

"Well," said I, "there was some one there, _I_ can make oath of that. I
was so tired I could not make up my mind to get up; but I was waked by a
sound that I thought was some one flinging down the two tin boxes in
which my papers were locked up violently on the floor. I heard a slow
step on the ground, and there was light in the room, although I
remembered having put out my candle. I thought it must have been you,
who had come in for my clothes, and upset the boxes by accident. Whoever
it was, he went out, and the light with him. I was about to settle
again, when, the curtain being a little open at the foot of the bed, I
saw a light on the wall opposite; such as a candle from outside would
cast if the door were very cautiously opening. I started up in the bed,
drew the side curtain, and saw that the door _was_ opening, and
admitting light from outside. It is close, you know, to the head of the
bed. A hand was holding on the edge of the door and pushing it open; not
a bit like yours; a very singular hand. Let me look at yours."

He extended it for my i