“Do not all leave the house.  God only knows, now, situated as we are, what might happen.”

“I will remain, then,” said George.  “I have been sitting up to-night as the guard, and, therefore, may as well continue to do so.”

Marchdale and Charles Holland clambered over the balcony, and easily, from its insignificant height, dropped into the garden.  The night was beautiful, and profoundly still.  There was not a breath of air sufficient to stir a leaf on a tree, and the very flame of the candle which Charles had left burning in the balcony burnt clearly and steadily, being perfectly unruffled by any wind.

It cast a sufficient light close to the window to make everything very plainly visible, and it was evident at a glance that no object was there, although had that figure, which Charles shot at, and no doubt hit, been flesh and blood, it must have dropped immediately below.

As they looked up for a moment after a cursory examination of the ground, Charles exclaimed,—­

“Look at the window!  As the light is now situated, you can see the hole made in one of the panes of glass by the passage of the bullet from my pistol.”

They did look, and there the clear, round hole, without any starring, which a bullet discharged close to a pane of glass will make in it, was clearly and plainly discernible.

“You must have hit him,” said Henry.

“One would think so,” said Charles; “for that was the exact place where the figure was.”

“And there is nothing here,” added Marchdale.  “What can we think of these events—­what resource has the mind against the most dreadful suppositions concerning them?”

Charles and Henry were both silent; in truth, they knew not what to think, and the words uttered by Marchdale were too strikingly true to dispute for a moment.  They were lost in wonder.

“Human means against such an appearance as we saw to-night,” said Charles, “are evidently useless.”

“My dear young friend,” said Marchdale, with much emotion, as he grasped Henry Bannerworth’s hand, and the tears stood in his eyes as he did so,—­“my dear young friend, these constant alarms will kill you.  They will drive you, and all whose happiness you hold dear, distracted.  You must control these dreadful feelings, and there is but one chance that I can see of getting now the better of these.”

“What is that?”

“By leaving this place for ever.”

“Alas! am I to be driven from the home of my ancestors from such a cause as this?  And whither am I to fly?  Where are we to find a refuge?  To leave here will be at once to break up the establishment which is now held together, certainly upon the sufferance of creditors, but still to their advantage, inasmuch as I am doing what no one else would do, namely, paying away to within the scantiest pittance the whole proceeds of the estate that spreads around me.”

“Heed nothing but an escape from such horrors as seem to be accumulating now around you.”