During the following day, moreover, Mr. Skale remained invisible.  Spinrobin, of course, had never permitted himself to search the house, or even to examine the other rooms in his own corridor.  The quarters where Miriam slept were equally unknown to him.  But he was quite certain that these prolonged periods of absence were spent by the clergyman in some remote part of the rambling building where there existed isolated, if not actually secret, rooms in which he practiced the rituals of some dangerous and intrepid worship.  And these intimidating and mysterious sounds at night were, of course, something to do with the forces he conjured....

The day was still and windless, the house silent as the grave.  He walked about the hills during the afternoon, practicing his Hebrew “Names” and “Words” like a schoolboy learning a lesson.  And all about him the slopes of mountain watched him, listening.  So did the sheet of snow, shining in the wintry sunlight.  The clergyman seemed to have put all sound in his pocket and taken it away with him.  The absence of anything approaching noise became almost oppressive.  It was a Silence that prepares.  Spinrobin went about on tiptoe, spoke to Miriam in whispers, practiced his Names in hushed, expectant tones.  He almost expected to see the moors and mountains open their deep sides and let the Sounds of which they were the visible shape escape awfully about him....

In these hours of solitude, all that Skale had told him, and more still that he divined himself, haunted him with a sense of disquieting reality.  Inaudible sounds of fearful volume, invisible forms of monstrous character, combinations of both even, impended everywhere about him.  He became afraid lest he might stumble, as Skale had done, on the very note that should release them and bring them howling, leaping, crashing about his ears.  Therefore, he tried to make himself as small as possible; he muffled steps and voice and personality.  If he could, he would have completely disappeared.

He looked forward to Skale’s return, but when evening came he was still alone, and he dined tete-a-tete with Miriam for the first time.  And she, too, he noticed, was unusually quiet.  Almost they seemed to have entered the world of Mrs. Mawle, the silent regions of the deaf.  But for the most part it is probable that these queer impressions were due to the unusual state of Spinrobin’s imagination.  He knew that it was his last night in the place—­unless the clergyman accepted him; he knew also that Mr. Skale had absented himself with a purpose, and that the said purpose had to do with the test of Alteration of Forms by Sound, which would surely be upon him before the sun rose.  So that, one way and another, it was natural enough that his nerves should have been somewhat overtaxed.

The presence of Miriam and Mrs. Mawle, however, did much to soothe him.  The latter, indeed, mothered the pair of them quite absurdly, smiling all the time while she moved about softly with the dishes, and doing her best to make them eat enough for four.  Between courses she sat at the end of the room, waiting in the shadows till Miriam beckoned to her, and once or twice going so far as to put her hand upon Spinrobin’s shoulder protectively.