“It’s as if he were mad,” said Julian, turning round.  “Hulloh, Val!  What the devil’s come to you?”

For he found Valentine standing up by the table with an expression of deep astonishment on his face.

He pointed in silence to the door.

“By Jove! that curtain again!” said Julian, with an accent of amazement.  “I’m damned!”

The curtain was, in fact, drawn back from the door.  Valentine struck a match and put it to a candle.  Then he opened the door.  Rip immediately darted out of the room and pattered excitedly down the passage, as if searching for something, his sharp nose investigating the ground with a vehement attention.  The young men followed him.  He ran to the front door, then back into Valentine’s bedroom; then, by turns, into the four other apartments—­bedroom, drawing-room, bathroom and kitchen—­that formed the suite.  The doors of the two latter were opened by Valentine.  Having completed this useless progress, Rip once more resorted to the passage and the front door, by which he paused, whimpering, in an uncertain, almost a wistful attitude.

“Open it!” said Julian.

Valentine did so.

They looked out upon the broad and dreary stone steps, and waited, listening.  There was no sound.  Rip still whimpered, rather feebly.  His excitement was evidently dying away.  At last Valentine shut the door, and they went back again to the tentroom, accompanied closely by the dog, who gradually regained his calmness, and who presently jumped of his own accord into his basket, and, after turning quickly round some half-dozen times, composed himself once more to sleep.

“I wish, after all, we had stayed in the other room by the fire,” Julian said.  “Give me some brandy.”

Valentine poured some into a glass and Julian swallowed it at a gulp.

“We mustn’t have Rip in the room another time,” he added.  “He spoilt the whole thing.”

“What whole thing?” Valentine asked, sinking down in a chair.

“Well, the sitting.  Perhaps—­perhaps one of Marr’s mysterious manifestations might have come off to-night.”

Valentine did not reply at first.  When he did, he startled Julian by saying: 

“Perhaps one of them did come off.”

“Did?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“What was Rip barking at?”

“There’s no accounting for what dogs will do.  They often bark at shadows.”

“At shadows—­yes, exactly.  But what cast a shadow to-night?”

Julian laughed with some apparent uneasiness.

“Perhaps a coming event,” he exclaimed.

Valentine looked at him rather gravely.

“That is exactly what I felt,” he said.

“Explain.  For I was only joking.”

“I felt, perhaps it was only a fancy, that this second sitting of ours brought some event a stage nearer, a stage nearer on its journey.”

“To what?”