the edge of something deep, and hasn’t the slightest intention of falling over.”

She sent him a companionable smile and was soon lost in her book. Derrick struggled on with his opening chapters, thankful that she had made no searching inquiry into his own inward sensations. There was no sound save the methodical turning of a page and the scratch of a pen. The fire puttered its ruddy comfort, and Beech Lodge was dipped in an abyss of silence.

Presently the inner edge of one of the heavy curtains that hung over the French window stirred ever so slightly and at one point drew very slowly aside, leaving a narrow oval gap on the border of which a man’s fingers, short, broad, and strong, were visible. This gap widened inch by inch, till, framed in the dull fabric, there appeared a face. A mass of tumbled hair surmounted a low forehead, beneath which moved eyes that were dark, shining, and restless. The man might have been forty, with tanned skin, large and rather uncouth features, a broad mouth, heavy lips—blue-black and unshaven—and a strange, furtive expression. No part of his body was visible below the chin, and the face hung as though suspended like a threatening mask in mid-air. The roving eyes searched the room, darting from place to place with extraordinary quickness, and reflecting little pin-points of light from the leaping flames. Finally they rested on Derrick and his sister with a look in which surprise mingled with a certain unconquerable composure. There was no fear in the look but rather the suggestion that this formidable stranger from the dark had been here before and was now making up his mind on some vital matter. Then the lips widened into a grin rendered repulsive by discolored teeth; the gap narrowed as silently as a leaf falls; face and fingers diminished and disappeared; the curtain trembled and hung straight; and there drifted into the room the faintest possible sound from without. It was over, like a baleful dream.

Derrick looked up sharply. “Who was that?”

Edith, perceiving nothing, stared at him. His face was tense, his eyes very wide open. She struggled against a foolish sense of alarm.

“Where, Jack?”

“In this room. Did any one come in just now?” He peered about, searching the dancing shadows, keyed suddenly to a strange pitch.

“No one,” she said. “Who could there be? I heard nothing.”

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