“And then, you know, just as Parsket was getting back his wits and looking from one to the other of us and beginning to remember, there happened a strange and incredible thing.  For from the end of the corridor there sounded suddenly, the clumping of a great hoof.  I looked that way and then instantly at Parsket and saw a horrible fear in his face and eyes.  He wrenched himself ’round, weakly, and stared in mad terror up the corridor to where the sound had been, and the rest of us stared, in a frozen group.  I remember vaguely half sobs and whispers from Miss Hisgins’s bedroom, all the while that I stared frightenedly up the corridor.

“The silence lasted several seconds and then, abruptly there came again the clumping of the great hoof, away at the end of the corridor.  And immediately afterward the clungk, clunk—­clungk, clunk of mighty hoofs coming down the passage toward us.

“Even then, you know, most of us thought it was some mechanism of Parsket’s still at work and we were in the queerest mixture of fright and doubt.  I think everyone looked at Parsket.  And suddenly the Captain shouted out: 

“‘Stop this damned fooling at once.  Haven’t you done enough?’

“For my part, I was now frightened for I had a sense that there was something horrible and wrong.  And then Parsket managed to gasp out: 

“‘It’s not me!  My God!  It’s not me!  My God!  It’s not me.’

“And then, you know, it seemed to come home to everyone in an instant that there was really some dreadful thing coming down the passage.  There was a mad rush to get away and even old Captain Hisgins gave back with the butler and the footmen.  Beaumont fainted outright, as I found afterward, for he had been badly mauled.  I just flattened back against the wall, kneeling as I was, too stupid and dazed even to run.  And almost in the same instant the ponderous hoof falls sounded close to me and seeming to shake the solid floor as they passed.  Abruptly the great sounds ceased and I knew in a sort of sick fashion that the thing had halted opposite to the door of the girl’s bedroom.  And then I was aware that Parsket was standing rocking in the doorway with his arms spread across, so as to fill the doorway with his body.  Parsket was extraordinarily pale and the blood was running down his face from the wound in his forehead; and then I noticed that he seemed to be looking at something in the passage with a peculiar, desperate, fixed, incredibly masterful gaze.  But there was really nothing to be seen.  And suddenly the clungk, clunk—­clungk, clunk recommenced and passed onward down the passage.  In the same moment Parsket pitched forward out of the doorway on to his face.

“There were shouts from the huddle of men down the passage and the two footmen and the butler simply ran, carrying their lanterns, but the Captain went against the side-wall with his back and put the lamp he was carrying over his head.  The dull tread of the Horse went past him, and left him unharmed and I heard the monstrous hoof falls going away and away through the quiet house and after that a dead silence.