"God! God! what is that?"

"I hear nothing," I replied.

"But see--see!" he said, pointing along the road, directly ahead.

I said: "Nothing is there. Come, father, let us go in--you are
ill."

He had released my arm and was standing rigid and motionless in the
center of the illuminated roadway, staring like one bereft of sense.
His face in the moonlight showed a pallor and fixity inexpressibly
distressing. I pulled gently at his sleeve, but he had forgotten my
existence. Presently he began to retire backward, step by step,
never for an instant removing his eyes from what he saw, or thought
he saw. I turned half round to follow, but stood irresolute. I do
not recall any feeling of fear, unless a sudden chill was its
physical manifestation. It seemed as if an icy wind had touched my
face and enfolded my body from head to foot; I could feel the stir of
it in my hair.

At that moment my attention was drawn to a light that suddenly
streamed from an upper window of the house: one of the servants,
awakened by what mysterious premonition of evil who can say, and in
obedience to an impulse that she was never able to name, had lit a
lamp. When I turned to look for my father he was gone, and in all
the years that have passed no whisper of his fate has come across the
borderland of conjecture from the realm of the unknown.