“When we got upstairs I inquired very anxiously how Miss Hisgins was and the girl came out herself to tell me that she was all right and that I was not to trouble about her, or blame myself, as I told her I had been doing.

“I felt happier then and went off to dress for dinner and after that was done, Parsket and I took one of the bathrooms to develop the negatives that I had been taking.  Yet none of the plates had anything to tell us until we came to the one that was taken in the cellar.  Parsket was developing and I had taken a batch of the fixed plates out into the lamplight to examine them.

“I had just gone carefully through the lot when I heard a shout from Parsket and when I ran to him he was looking at a partly-developed negative which he was holding up to the red lamp.  It showed the girl plainly, looking upward as I had seen her, but the thing that astonished me was the shadow of an enormous hoof, right above her, as if it were coming down upon her out of the shadows.  And you know, I had run her bang into that danger.  That was the thought that was chief in my mind.

“As soon as the developing was complete I fixed the plate and examined it carefully in a good light.  There was no doubt about it at all, the thing above Miss Hisgins was an enormous, shadowy hoof.  Yet I was no nearer to coming to any definite knowledge and the only thing I could do was to warn Parsket to say nothing about it to the girl for it would only increase her fright, but I showed the thing to her father for I considered it right that he should know.

“That night we took the same precaution for Miss Hisgins’s safety as on the two previous nights and Parsket kept me company; yet the dawn came in without anything unusual having happened and I went off to bed.

“When I got down to lunch I learnt that Beaumont had wired to say that he would be in soon after four; also that a message had been sent to the Rector.  And it was generally plain that the ladies of the house were in a tremendous fluster.

“Beaumont’s train was late and he did not get home until five, but even then the Rector had not put in an appearance and the butler came in to say that the coachman had returned without him as he had been called away unexpectedly.  Twice more during the evening the carriage was sent down, but the clergyman had not returned and we had to delay the marriage until the next day.

“That night I arranged the ‘Defense’ ’round the girl’s bed and the Captain and his wife sat up with her as before.  Beaumont, as I expected, insisted on keeping watch with me and he seemed in a curiously frightened mood; not for himself, you know, but for Miss Hisgins.  He had a horrible feeling he told me, that there would be a final, dreadful attempt on his sweetheart that night.

“This, of course, I told him was nothing but nerves; yet really, it made me feel very anxious; for I have seen too much not to know that under such circumstances a premonitory conviction of impending danger is not necessarily to be put down entirely to nerves.  In fact, Beaumont was so simply and earnestly convinced that the night would bring some extraordinary manifestation that I got Parsket to rig up a long cord from the wire of the butler’s bell, to come along the passage handy.