influence of some unnameable force.

He was almost come to the sun-dial when I determined to cry out. Then,
remembering the shock experienced by a suddenly awakened somnambulist,
and remembering that the Chinese ladder hung from the window at my
feet, I changed my mind. Checking the cry upon my lips, I got astride
of the window ledge, and began to grope for the bamboo rungs beneath
me. I had found the first of these, and, turning, had begun to descend,
when:

"Knox! Knox!" came softly from the opening in the box hedge, "what the
devil are you about?"

It was Paul Harley returned from his tour of the building.

"Harley!" I whispered, descending, "quick! the Colonel has just gone
into the Tudor garden!"

"What!" There was a note of absolute horror in the exclamation. "You
should have stopped him, Knox, you should have stopped him!" cried
Harley, and with that he ran off in the same direction.

Disentangling my foot from the rungs of the ladder which lay upon the
ground, I was about to follow, when it happened--that strange and
ghastly thing toward which, secretly, darkly, events had been tending.

The crack of a rifle sounded sharply in the stillness, echoing and re-
echoing from wing to wing of Cray's Folly and then, more dimly, up the
wooded slopes beyond! Somewhere ahead of me I heard Harley cry out: