rrayed afresh my scanty knowledge. The strangeness of my position, besides, kept me in some excitement. Here was I quietly abed in a house where I knew no one; Clutterbuck might

exed me still. I could not for a moment entertain Dick's supposition of a spirit. This was the middle of the eighteenth century, you will understand, and I had come fresh from

t have read my watch, even if I had looked at it, which I did not think to do. But at some

nly an hour or so before I had been boasting to myself that I was London-bred and lived in the middle of the eighteenth century. But none the less my hair stirred upon my head, and all the moisture dried up in my throat as I stared at that dim white thing wavering and swaying between the bed-posts. It was taller than any human being that I had seen. I remembered the weird screeching sound which I had heard in the hollow; I think that in my heart I begged Dick Parmiter's pardon for laughing

he darkness, I could see, on a level with my face, the face of a woman. Her eyes were open and t

on nothing whatever! Again the queer gasping coughing noise broke from her lips, and at last I understood it. It was a gasp of a woman strangling to death. That white stiff streak above her head--I knew what it was too. I caught her by the waist and lifted her u

kept it taut, it loosened easily. I slipped the noose back over her head and left

r to the right of the window, as I climbed into the room. I groped for the chair and set it to face the open night. Then I carried the woman to the window and placed her in the

an extreme blackness. She was of a slight figure as I knew from the ease with which I carried her, but tall. I could not doubt who it wa

and in a little, she began to recover. She moved her hands upo

the room," said I. "If you are safe, if

ou," she

at the moment. I took my arm from her waist and groped about the room for the water

raise her head. I spoke to her. She did not answer me. A horrible fear turned me cold. I knelt down by her side, and setting down the water gently lifted her head. She did not resist but sank back with a

I explain what had happened and my presence in the house? For Helen Mayle's sa

narrow passage stretched in front of me, with doors upon either side. Remembering what Dick Parmiter had told me, I mean that every sound reverberated throug

ched a balustrade. A few yards farther on the balustrade ceased; there was an empty space which

e to that for which I searched, and which I barely hoped to find--an open door. I held my breath a

rigantine breaking up upon the Golden Ball Reef. But the light was broadening with the passage of every minute. With the same caution which I had observed before I stole back on tiptoe to Cullen Mayle's room. Helen Mayle was still asleep, and she had not moved from her posture. I raised her in my arms, and still she did not wake. I carried her down the passage, through the open door and laid her on the bed. There was a coverlet folded at the end of the bed and I spread it over her. She nestled do

nant Clutterbuck's lodging off the Strand--when every one slept, and there she had deliberately stood upon the bed, fastened her noose to the cross-bar and sprang off.