However, Aaron anticipated him.  “Might as well leave the devil alone,” said he.  “It might have been the old one himself, for all we can tell by them tracks.  You had better go back to bed, Doctor Elliot.  You ain’t got much on.  It ain’t near breakfast time yet.  Better go back to bed.”

And James thought such a course the wiser one himself.  He went back to bed, but not to sleep.  He kept his eyes fixed upon the windows.  He was prepared at any instant, should the man reappear, to spring out.  He felt almost murderous.  “It has come to a pretty pass,” he thought, “if that scoundrel, whoever he may be, is lurking around the house at night.”

The daylight came slowly on account of the storm.  When it did come, it was an opaque white daylight.  James began to smell coffee and frying ham.  He rose and dressed himself, and looked out of the window.  It was like looking into a blurred mirror.  He began to wonder if he could have been mistaken, if possibly that face had been simply a vision which had come from his overwrought brain.  He wondered if he should tell Doctor Gordon, if it might not disturb him unnecessarily.  He wondered if he should have enforced secrecy upon Aaron.  He was still undecided when the Japanese gong sounded, and he went out to breakfast.  Clemency was looking worn and ill.  Somehow the sight of her piteous little face decided James.  He thought how easily an athletic man could climb up one of those piazza posts, which was, moreover, encircled by a strong old vine which might almost serve as ladder.  He made up his mind to tell Doctor Gordon, and he did tell him when they were out upon their rounds, tilting and sliding along the drifted country roads in an old sleigh.  “I don’t think I can be mistaken,” he said when he had finished.

Doctor Gordon looked at him intently.  “You are sure,” he said.  “You are a nervous subject for a man, and you had not slept, and you had this man very much on your mind, and there must have been some snow on the window which could produce an illusion.  Be very sure, because this is serious.”

James thought again of Clemency’s little white face.  “Yes,” he said, “I am sure.”

“You have no doubt at all?”

“None.  The man had his face staring into the room.  He did not seem to see me, but looked past me at the bed.”

“He might easily have thought that room, being on the ground floor and accessible to night-calls, was mine,” said Doctor Gordon, as if to himself.

“I thought how easily he could have climbed up one of the piazza posts to her room,” said James.

The Doctor started.  “Yes, that is so,” he said.  “He might have had two motives.  That is so.”