from across the mere. They might be the notes of owls or water-birds, yet
they did not quite resemble either sound. Were not they coming nearer?
Now they sounded from the nearer side of the water, and in a few moments
they seemed to be floating about among the shrubberies. Then they ceased;
but just as Stephen was thinking of shutting the window and resuming his
reading of _Robinson Crusoe_, he caught sight of two figures standing on
the gravelled terrace that ran along the garden side of the Hall--the
figures of a boy and girl, as it seemed; they stood side by side, looking
up at the windows. Something in the form of the girl recalled
irresistibly his dream of the figure in the bath. The boy inspired him
with more acute fear.

Whilst the girl stood still, half smiling, with her hands clasped over
her heart, the boy, a thin shape, with black hair and ragged clothing,
raised his arms in the air with an appearance of menace and of
unappeasable hunger and longing. The moon shone upon his almost
transparent hands, and Stephen saw that the nails were fearfully long and
that the light shone through them. As he stood with his arms thus raised,
he disclosed a terrifying spectacle. On the left side of his chest there
opened a black and gaping rent; and there fell upon Stephen's brain,
rather than upon his ear, the impression of one of those hungry and
desolate cries that he had heard resounding over the woods of Aswarby all
that evening. In another moment this dreadful pair had moved swiftly and
noiselessly over the dry gravel, and he saw them no more.

Inexpressibly frightened as he was, he determined to take his candle and
go down to Mr Abney's study, for the hour appointed for their meeting was
near at hand. The study or library opened out of the front-hall on one
side, and Stephen, urged on by his terrors, did not take long in getting
there. To effect an entrance was not so easy. It was not locked, he felt