window on either side of the door, and no other appeared in
sight; but a little smoke rising from the chimney seemed to
promise a better reception than the desolate landscape and the
girl's scanty dress had led us to expect.

As we drew nearer, however, a thing happened so remarkable as to
draw our attention in a moment from all these points, and bring
us, gaping, to a standstill. The shutters of the two windows
were suddenly closed before our eyes with a clap that came
sharply on the wind. Then, in a twinkling, one window flew open
again and a man, seemingly naked, bounded from it, fled with
inconceivable rapidity across the front of the house and vanished
through the other window, which opened to receive him. He had
scarcely gained that shelter before a coal-black figure followed
him, leaping out of the one window and in at the other with the
same astonishing swiftness--a swiftness which was so great that
before any of us could utter more than an exclamation, the two
figures appeared again round the corner of the house, in the same
order, but this time with so small an interval that the fugitive
barely saved himself through the window. Once more, while we
stared in stupefaction, they flashed out and in; and this time it
seemed to me that as they vanished the black spectre seized its
victim.

When I say that all this time the two figures uttered no sound,
that there was no other living being in sight, and that on every
side of the solitary house the moor, growing each minute more
eerie as the day waned, spread to the horizon, the more
superstitious among us may be pardoned if they gave way to their
fears. La Font was the first to speak.