To this house, one summer evening, came four men in a wagon.  Three of them promptly alighted, and the one who had been driving hitched the team to the only remaining post of what had been a fence.  The fourth remained seated in the wagon.  “Come,” said one of his companions, approaching him, while the others moved away in the direction of the dwelling—­“this is the place.”

The man addressed did not move.  “By God!” he said harshly, “this is a trick, and it looks to me as if you were in it.”

“Perhaps I am,” the other said, looking him straight in the face and speaking in a tone which had something of contempt in it.  “You will remember, however, that the choice of place was with your own assent left to the other side.  Of course if you are afraid of spooks—­”

“I am afraid of nothing,” the man interrupted with another oath, and sprang to the ground.  The two then joined the others at the door, which one of them had already opened with some difficulty, caused by rust of lock and hinge.  All entered.  Inside it was dark, but the man who had unlocked the door produced a candle and matches and made a light.  He then unlocked a door on their right as they stood in the passage.  This gave them entrance to a large, square room that the candle but dimly lighted.  The floor had a thick carpeting of dust, which partly muffled their footfalls.  Cobwebs were in the angles of the walls and depended from the ceiling like strips of rotting lace making undulatory movements in the disturbed air.  The room had two windows in adjoining sides, but from neither could anything be seen except the rough inner surfaces of boards a few inches from the glass.  There was no fireplace, no furniture; there was nothing:  besides the cobwebs and the dust, the four men were the only objects there which were not a part of the structure.

Strange enough they looked in the yellow light of the candle.  The one who had so reluctantly alighted was especially spectacular—­he might have been called sensational.  He was of middle age, heavily built, deep chested, and broad shouldered.  Looking at his figure, one would have said that he had a giant’s strength; at his features, that he would use it like a giant.  He was clean shaven, his hair rather closely cropped and gray.  His low forehead was seamed with wrinkles above the eyes, and over the nose these became vertical.  The heavy black brows followed the same law, saved from meeting only by an upward turn at what would otherwise have been the point of contact.  Deeply sunken beneath these, glowed in the obscure light a pair of eyes of uncertain color, but obviously enough too small.  There was something forbidding in their expression, which was not bettered by the cruel mouth and wide jaw.  The nose was well enough, as noses go; one does not expect much of noses.  All that was sinister in the man’s face seemed accentuated by an unnatural pallor—­he appeared altogether bloodless.