restless clumping of a great hoof. Immediately afterward the sounds came
right on as if some invisible thing passed through the closed door and
the ponderous tread was upon us. We jumped, each of us, to our side of
the passage and I know that I spread myself stiff against the wall. The
clungk clunck, clungk clunck, of the great hoof falls passed right
between us and slowly and with deadly deliberateness, down the passage.
I heard them through a haze of blood beats in my ears and temples and my
body was extraordinarily rigid and pringling and I was horribly
breathless. I stood for a little time like this, my head turned so that I
could see up the passage. I was conscious only that there was a hideous
danger abroad. Do you understand?

"And then, suddenly, my pluck came back to me. I was aware that the noise
of the hoof beats sounded near the other end of the passage. I twisted
quickly and got my camera to bear and snapped off the flashlight.
Immediately afterward, Beaumont let fly a storm of shots down the passage
and began to run, shouting: 'It's after Mary. Run! Run!'

"He rushed down the passage and I after him. We came out on the main
landing and heard the sound of a hoof on the stairs and after that,
nothing. And from thence onward, nothing.

"Down below us in the big hall I could see a number of the household
'round Miss Hisgins, who seemed to have fainted and there were several of
the servants clumped together a little way off, staring up at the main
landing and no one saying a single word. And about some twenty steps up
the stairs was the old Captain Hisgins with a drawn sword in his hand
where he had halted, just below the last hoof sound. I think I never saw
anything finer than the old man standing there between his daughter and
that infernal thing.