would, and on such an occasion as this I was grateful even for the
smallest mercies.

The absence of the Indians from my immediate neighbourhood brought
little sense of relief. I stood shivering and shuddering in my corner,
and, beyond being able to breathe more freely, I felt no whit less
uncomfortable. Also, I was aware that a certain light, which, without
apparent source or rays, had enabled me to follow their every gesture
and movement, had gone out of the room with their departure. An
unnatural darkness now filled the room, and pervaded its every corner so
that I could barely make out the positions of the windows and the glass
doors.

As I said before, my condition was evidently an abnormal one. The
capacity for feeling surprise seemed, as in dreams, to be wholly absent.
My senses recorded with unusual accuracy every smallest occurrence, but
I was able to draw only the simplest deductions.

The Indians soon reached the top of the stairs, and there they halted
for a moment. I had not the faintest clue as to their next movement.
They appeared to hesitate. They were listening attentively. Then I heard
one of them, who by the weight of his soft tread must have been the
giant, cross the narrow corridor and enter the room directly
overhead--my own little bedroom. But for the insistence of that
unaccountable dread I had experienced there in the morning, I should at
that very moment have been lying in the bed with the big Indian in the
room standing beside me.

For the space of a hundred seconds there was silence, such as might
have existed before the birth of sound. It was followed by a long