loudly in the horrible silence.  I landed on my back, and slithered along on the polished marble.  My shoulder struck the corner of a pew front, and brought me up, half stunned.  I scrambled to my feet, horribly sick and shaken; but the fear that was on me, making little of that at the moment.  I was minus both revolver and lantern, and utterly bewildered as to just where I was standing.  I bowed my head, and made a scrambling run in the complete darkness and dashed into a pew.  I jumped back, staggering, got my bearings a little, and raced down the center of the aisle, putting my mailed arms over my face.  I plunged into my camera, hurling it among the pews.  I crashed into the font, and reeled back.  Then I was at the exit.  I fumbled madly in my dressing gown pocket for the key.  I found it and scraped at the door, feverishly, for the keyhole.  I found the keyhole, turned the key, burst the door open, and was into the passage.  I slammed the door and leant hard against it, gasping, whilst I felt crazily again for the keyhole, this time to lock the door upon what was in the Chapel.  I succeeded, and began to feel my way stupidly along the wall of the corridor.  Presently I had come to the big hall, and so in a little to my room.

“In my room, I sat for a while, until I had steadied down something to the normal.  After a time I commenced to strip off the armor.  I saw then that both the chain mail and the plate armor had been pierced over the breast.  And, suddenly, it came home to me that the Thing had struck for my heart.

“Stripping rapidly, I found that the skin of the breast over the heart had just been cut sufficiently to allow a little blood to stain my shirt, nothing more.  Only, the whole breast was badly bruised and intensely painful.  You can imagine what would have happened if I had not worn the armor.  In any case, it is a marvel that I was not knocked senseless.

“I did not go to bed at all that night, but sat upon the edge, thinking, and waiting for the dawn; for I had to remove my litter before Sir Alfred Jarnock should enter, if I were to hide from him the fact that I had managed a duplicate key.

“So soon as the pale light of the morning had strengthened sufficiently to show me the various details of my room, I made my way quietly down to the Chapel.  Very silently, and with tense nerves, I opened the door.  The chill light of the dawn made distinct the whole place—­everything seeming instinct with a ghostly, unearthly quiet.  Can you get the feeling?  I waited several minutes at the door, allowing the morning to grow, and likewise my courage, I suppose.  Presently the rising sun threw an odd beam right in through the big, East window, making colored sunshine all the length of the Chapel.  And then, with a tremendous effort, I forced myself to enter.

“I went up the aisle to where I had overthrown my camera in the darkness.  The legs of the tripod were sticking up from the interior of a pew, and I expected to find the machine smashed to pieces; yet, beyond that the ground glass was broken, there was no real damage done.