long moment the horror lasted. Then the head, as it had come,
disappeared, and the light, light foot fall, faded away.

Buck Daniels had risen, now. The sound of his whisper made them start.

"I'm going up--to my room--and lock the door--for God's sake--keep--him
away!"

And so he stole soundlessly away, and then they heard the creaks which
announced his progress up the stairs.

Not Buck Daniels alone. In the deadly silence Kate rose to her feet; and
the old man, the invalid--he with the dead body and the living brain,
rose from his couch and stood as erect as a soldier on parade. The
doctor was conscious of repeating to himself, hurriedly, a formula
something like this: "The thing which is coming is human; it cannot be
more than human; as long as it is human it is nothing to fear; the laws
of truth are irrevocably fixed; the laws of science will not change."
Yet in spite of this formula he was deadly cold, as if a wind were
blowing through his naked soul. It was not fear. It was something beyond
fear, and he would not have been otherwhere for any reward. All his mind
remained poised, expectant, as the astronomer waits for the new star
which his calculations have predicted to enter the field of his
telescope.

He caught the sound of another horse coming, far different even to his
unpracticed ear from the beat of hoofs which announced the coming of
Buck Daniels. The rhythm of their fall was slower, as if the stride of
the animal were much longer. He pictured a mighty creature with a vast
mane blown back against the chest of a giant rider. There was a murmur