turned round.

He was a handsome lad of some eight or nine summers, with regular,
strongly-marked features, and dark hair and eyes. The brown hand
and arm which lay exposed to view showed a muscular development
that betokened great strength to come when the boy should be grown
to manhood, and the face exhibited a like promise of strength of
will and character.

Bertram Chadgrove, half aroused by the strong light of the moon in
his face, opened his dark eyes sleepily for a few minutes, and then
turned over towards the wall, and prepared to slumber again. But
before he had sunk to sleep he became further aroused by a very
peculiar sound in the wall (as it seemed), close to which his bed
was stationed; and instead of drowsing off again, he woke up with
all his faculties on the alert, much as a watchdog does, and
sitting up in bed he listened with all his ears.

Yes; there could be no mistaking it! There was certainly a sound--a
muffled, curious sound--within the very wall itself. He pressed his
ear against the panel, and his eyes shone brightly in the
moonlight.

"It is some living thing," he whispered to himself. "Methinks it is
surely some human thing. Rats can make strange sounds, I know, but
not such sounds as these. A human being, and within the thickness
of the wall! How can such a thing be? I never heard the like
before. It comes nearer--I hear the groping of hands close beside
mine ear. Heaven send it be not a spirit from the other world! I
fear no mortal arm, of flesh and blood, but I desire not to see a