“I daresay a couple of minutes passed, and then, away up near the chancel, there came again that clang, as though an armored foot stepped cautiously.  By Jove! but it made me stiffen.  And suddenly the thought came that the sound I heard might be the rattle of the dagger above the altar.  It was not a particularly sensible notion, for the sound was far too heavy and resonant for such a cause.  Yet, as can be easily understood, my reason was bound to submit somewhat to my fancy at such a time.  I remember now, that the idea of that insensate thing becoming animate, and attacking me, did not occur to me with any sense of possibility or reality.  I thought rather, in a vague way, of some invisible monster of outer space fumbling at the dagger.  I remembered the old Rector’s description of the attack on the butler.... of the void.  And he had described the stupendous force of the blow as being ‘like the kick of a great horse.’  You can see how uncomfortably my thoughts were running.

“I felt ’round swiftly and cautiously for my lantern.  I found it close to me, on the pew seat, and with a sudden, jerky movement, I switched on the light.  I flashed it up the aisle, to and fro across the chancel, but I could see nothing to frighten me.  I turned quickly, and sent the jet of light darting across and across the rear end of the Chapel; then on each side of me, before and behind, up at the roof and down at the marble floor, but nowhere was there any visible thing to put me in fear, not a thing that need have set my flesh thrilling; just the quiet Chapel, cold, and eternally silent.  You know the feeling.

“I had been standing, whilst I sent the light about the Chapel, but now I pulled out my revolver, and then, with a tremendous effort of will, switched off the light, and sat down again in the darkness, to continue my constant watch.

“It seemed to me that quite half an hour, or even more, must have passed, after this, during which no sound had broken the intense stillness.  I had grown less nervously tense, for the flashing of the light ’round the place had made me feel less out of all bounds of the normal—­it had given me something of that unreasoned sense of safety that a nervous child obtains at night, by covering its head up with the bedclothes.  This just about illustrates the completely human illogicalness of the workings of my feelings; for, as you know, whatever Creature, Thing, or Being it was that had made that extraordinary and horrible attack on the old butler, it had certainly not been visible.

“And so you must picture me sitting there in the dark; clumsy with armor, and with my revolver in one hand, and nursing my lantern, ready, with the other.  And then it was, after this little time of partial relief from intense nervousness, that there came a fresh strain on me; for somewhere in the utter quiet of the Chapel, I thought I heard something.  I listened, tense and rigid, my heart booming just