Was ever reverie more vain! He raised his head and stared about him. The
glaring lamp showed all the details of the room, and made it seem so
real, so much more real than mere thoughts, let alone that of which one
cannot think. He got up to alter the stove-damper, pushing it shut with
a clatter of iron, burning his fingers slightly, and sat down again,
feeling it a relief to know, if by the smart, that he had touched
something.

The wood within the stove ceased blazing when the damper was shut, and
when its crackling was silenced there was a great quiet. The air outside
was still; the flame of the lamp could hardly make sound. Trenholme's
watch, which lay on the table, ticked and seemed to clamour for his
attention. He glanced down at it. It was not very far from midnight.

Just then he heard another sound. It was possibly the same as that which
came to him an hour ago, but more continuous. There was no mistaking
this time that it was an unusual one. It seemed to him like a human
voice in prolonged ejaculatory speech at some distance.

Startled, he again looked out of his door. At first he saw nothing, but
what he had seen before--the world of snow, the starry skies. Yet the
sound, which stopped and again went on, came to him as if from the
direction in which he looked. Looking, listening intently, he was just
about to turn in for his coat and snow-shoes in order to go forth and
seek the owner of the voice, when he perceived something moving between
him and the nearest wood--that very birch wood in which, more than a
month before, he had sought for the man Cameron who had disappeared from
his own coffin. In an instant the mood of that time flashed back on him
as if there had been nothing between.