“Do you hear that?” she whispered, letting him keep her hand, even clasping his with her fingers.  “There’s something alive in this church, something besides ourselves.”

Nick felt giddy.  It was all he could do to keep himself from catching her in his arms, no matter what might be the consequences, no matter how she might hate him a moment afterward.  But he resisted, and the strain of temptation passed.

“A bird has got in, perhaps,” he said.

“You—­you—­don’t think it could be the Padre himself ill, or—­or——­”

Nick understood her hesitation and fear.

“No,” he soothed her.  “We’d have seen any but some small thing.  I’ve got two or three matches in my box, I guess.  We’ll have a look around.”  This was supreme self-sacrifice on his part, for to find matches and “look around” meant letting Angela’s hand go.  To let it go was tempting Providence, since almost certainly she would never, of her own accord, slip it into his again.

“Yes, do let us,” she said, and drew the hand away.  Nick supposed she had hardly been conscious that he had held her fingers in his, and even pressed them.  But this was not the fact.  True, Angela had mechanically groped for a protecting touch.  Nevertheless, she was aware of Nick’s hand on hers, and glad of it, with a gladness made up of several conflicting feelings:  such as surprise, some slight shame, and defiance of that shame.  She was afraid of the rustling in the dark, which might mean a lurking thief, a man half murdered, or one of a dozen things each more unpleasant than the other.  Yet she half liked being afraid in the dark, with Nick Hilliard to reassure her, though she would have hated it with Billy.  No unknown horror she could conjure up would have made her want to touch Billy.  She was almost sorry when Nick found his matches and together they began moving about the church, she keeping a little behind.

The last match but one lit up something white that stirred beside the altar; and as the flame died down, leaving only a red glowing point, a pair of eyes like two points of fire stared up from the floor.

“Oh!” murmured Angela, and clutched Nick’s coat sleeve, like a girl of early Victorian days.  But, after all, women have not changed in essentials.  They are much the same now in the dark, when pale things stir or shine unexpectedly; and they are still glad to have with them at such times a man, preferably a handsome man, they happen to like better than any other.

“Great Scot, it’s an owl!” said Nick, profiting by the last match of all.  It was, or appeared to be, a white owl; and it seemed to him for a second or two as if the witch-bird of the Grapevine man at Los Angeles had come to give the advice it had refused.  But this was a childish idea, he knew!  The owl was a plain, ordinary owl, which no doubt lived in the neighbourhood of San Miguel, and had flopped in, perhaps in search of the proverbial church mouse.  It was afraid of the other intruders, and afraid of the match, so afraid that it flapped its wings and hooted dismally.  It hooted three times, which, if it had been the witch fortune-teller, might really have meant something, though there was no time just then to think what.  Nick was somewhat alarmed lest, in its anger and fear, it should dash at Angela’s face, but she would not let him strike the creature with his hat.