I felt as if a dash of cold water had been suddenly thrown in my face.

"Indeed?" I stammered, scarcely knowing what I said. "You appear so
young a girl that I never once thought of you as being a married
woman."

"I was married very early; indeed, before I was seventeen. My husband--"

What she was about to add I could but conjecture, for a quick change in
the expression of her face startled me.

"What is it?" I questioned, half rising to my feet, and glancing over
my shoulder toward the wall where her eyes were riveted.

"Something resembling a hand pushed aside the coat hanging yonder," she
explained in low trembling tone, "and I thought I saw a face."

With one stride I was across the narrow room, and tore the garment from
its wooden hook. The log wall where it hung was blank. I struck it here
and there with the steel hilt of my sabre, but it returned a perfectly
solid sound, and I glanced about bewildered. The woman was watching me
with affrighted eyes.

"This entire house is uncanny," she exclaimed. "The very being in it
makes my flesh creep. It may have been a den of murderers. Captain, let
us get outside into the sunshine."

Believing it to be merely her overwrought nerves which were at fault, I
sought to soothe her. "It was probably no more than a shadow," I said,