“After I had done this I shut off my lantern and sat down in one of the pews near to my camera.  I cannot say what I expected to happen, but I had an extraordinary feeling, almost a conviction, that something peculiar or horrible would soon occur.  It was, you know, as if I knew.

“An hour passed, of absolute silence.  The time I knew by the far-off, faint chime of a dock that had been erected over the stables.  I was beastly cold, for the whole place is without any kind of heating pipes or furnace, as I had noticed during my search, so that the temperature was sufficiently uncomfortable to suit my frame of mind.  I felt like a kind of human periwinkle encased in boilerplate and frozen with cold and funk.  And, you know, somehow the dark about me seemed to press coldly against my face.  I cannot say whether any of you have ever had the feeling, but if you have, you will know just how disgustingly unnerving it is.  And then, all at once, I had a horrible sense that something was moving in the place.  It was not that I could hear anything but I had a kind of intuitive knowledge that something had stirred in the darkness.  Can you imagine how I felt?

“Suddenly my courage went.  I put up my mailed arms over my face.  I wanted to protect it.  I had got a sudden sickening feeling that something was hovering over me in the dark.  Talk about fright!  I could have shouted if I had not been afraid of the noise....  And then, abruptly, I heard something.  Away up the aisle, there sounded a dull clang of metal, as it might be the tread of a mailed heel upon the stone of the aisle.  I sat immovable.  I was fighting with all my strength to get back my courage.  I could not take my arms down from over my face, but I knew that I was getting hold of the gritty part of me again.  And suddenly I made a mighty effort and lowered my arms.  I held my face up in the darkness.  And, I tell you, I respect myself for the act, because I thought truly at that moment that I was going to die.  But I think, just then, by the slow revulsion of feeling which had assisted my effort, I was less sick, in that instant, at the thought of having to die, than at the knowledge of the utter weak cowardice that had so unexpectedly shaken me all to bits, for a time.

“Do I make myself clear?  You understand, I feel sure, that the sense of respect, which I spoke of, is not really unhealthy egotism; because, you see, I am not blind to the state of mind which helped me.  I mean that if I had uncovered my face by a sheer effort of will, unhelped by any revulsion of feeling, I should have done a thing much more worthy of mention.  But, even as it was, there were elements in the act, worthy of respect.  You follow me, don’t you?

“And, you know, nothing touched me, after all!  So that, in a little while, I had got back a bit to my normal, and felt steady enough to go through with the business without any more funking.