now near midnight.  But that laugh seemed the signal; before it died away the moaning we had heard before was resumed.  It started from some distance off, and came towards us, nearer and nearer, like some one walking along and moaning to himself.  There could be no idea now that it was a hare caught in a trap.  The approach was slow, like that of a weak person, with little halts and pauses.  We heard it coming along the grass straight towards the vacant door-way.  Simson had been a little startled by the first sound.  He said hastily, “That child has no business to be out so late.”  But he felt, as well as I, that this was no child’s voice.  As it came nearer, he grew silent, and, going to the door-way with his taper, stood looking out towards the sound.  The taper being unprotected blew about in the night air, though there was scarcely any wind.  I threw the light of my lantern steady and white across the same space.  It was in a blaze of light in the midst of the blackness.  A little icy thrill had gone over me at the first sound, but as it came close, I confess that my only feeling was satisfaction.  The scoffer could scoff no more.  The light touched his own face, and showed a very perplexed countenance.  If he was afraid, he concealed it with great success, but he was perplexed.  And then all that had happened on the previous night was enacted once more.  It fell strangely upon me with a sense of repetition.  Every cry, every sob seemed the same as before.  I listened almost without any emotion at all in my own person, thinking of its effect upon Simson.  He maintained a very bold front, on the whole.  All that coming and going of the voice was, if our ears could be trusted, exactly in front of the vacant, blank door-way, blazing full of light, which caught and shone in the glistening leaves of the great hollies at a little distance.  Not a rabbit could have crossed the turf without being seen; but there was nothing.  After a time, Simson, with a certain caution and bodily reluctance, as it seemed to me, went out with his roll of taper into this space.  His figure showed against the holly in full outline.  Just at this moment the voice sank, as was its custom, and seemed to fling itself down at the door.  Simson recoiled violently, as if some one had come up against him, then turned, and held his taper low, as if examining something.  “Do you see anybody?” I cried in a whisper, feeling the chill of nervous panic steal over me at this action.  “It’s nothing but a—­confounded juniper-bush,” he said.  This I knew very well to be nonsense, for the juniper-bush was on the other side.  He went about after this round and round, poking his taper everywhere, then returned to me on the inner side of the wall.  He scoffed no longer; his face was contracted and pale.  “How long does this go on?” he whispered to me, like a man who does not wish to interrupt some one who is speaking.  I had become too much perturbed myself to remark whether the successions and changes of the voice were the same as last night.  It suddenly went out in the air almost as he was speaking, with a soft reiterated sob dying away.  If there had been anything to be seen, I should have said that the person was at that moment crouching on the ground close to the door.