When all at once, quite suddenly, close to us, at our feet, there broke out a cry.  I made a spring backwards in the first moment of surprise and horror, and in doing so came sharply against the same rough masonry and brambles that had struck me before.  This new sound came upwards from the ground,—­a low, moaning, wailing voice, full of suffering and pain.  The contrast between it and the hoot of the owl was indescribable,—­the one with a wholesome wildness and naturalness that hurt nobody; the other, a sound that made one’s blood curdle, full of human misery.  With a great deal of fumbling,—­for in spite of everything I could do to keep up my courage my hands shook,—­I managed to remove the slide of my lantern.  The light leaped out like something living, and made the place visible in a moment.  We were what would have been inside the ruined building had anything remained but the gable-wall which I have described.  It was close to us, the vacant door-way in it going out straight into the blackness outside.  The light showed the bit of wall, the ivy glistening upon it in clouds of dark green, the bramble-branches waving, and below, the open door,—­a door that led to nothing.  It was from this the voice came which died out just as the light flashed upon this strange scene.  There was a moment’s silence, and then it broke forth again.  The sound was so near, so penetrating, so pitiful, that, in the nervous start I gave, the light fell out of my hand.  As I groped for it in the dark my hand was clutched by Bagley, who, I think, must have dropped upon his knees; but I was too much perturbed myself to think much of this.  He clutched at me in the confusion of his terror, forgetting all his usual decorum.  “For God’s sake, what is it, sir?” he gasped.  If I yielded, there was evidently an end of both of us.  “I can’t tell,” I said, “any more than you; that’s what we’ve got to find out.  Up, man, up!” I pulled him to his feet.  “Will you go round and examine the other side, or will you stay here with the lantern?” Bagley gasped at me with a face of horror.  “Can’t we stay together, Colonel?” he said; his knees were trembling under him.  I pushed him against the corner of the wall, and put the light into his hands.  “Stand fast till I come back; shake yourself together, man; let nothing pass you,” I said.  The voice was within two or three feet of us; of that there could be no doubt.

I went myself to the other side of the wall, keeping close to it.  The light shook in Bagley’s hand, but, tremulous though it was, shone out through the vacant door, one oblong block of light marking all the crumbling corners and hanging masses of foliage.  Was that something dark huddled in a heap by the side of it?  I pushed forward across the light in the door-way, and fell upon it with my hands; but it was only a juniper-bush growing close against the wall.  Meanwhile, the sight of my figure crossing the door-way had brought Bagley’s nervous excitement to a