She listened, herself as pale as a corpse, and nearly as breathless; but there was nothing now but the muffled gusts of the storm, and the close soft beat of the snow, so she listened and listened, but nothing came of it.

‘’Tis only the vapours,’ said Betty, drawing a long breath, and doing her best to be cheerful; and so she finished her labours, stopping every now and then to listen, and humming tunes very loud, in fits and starts.  Then it came to her turn to take her candle and go up stairs; she was a good half-hour later than Moggy—­all was quiet within the house—­only the sound of the storm—­the creak and rattle of its strain, and the hurly-burly of the gusts over the roof and chimneys.

Over her shoulder she peered jealously this way and that, as with flaring candle she climbed the stairs.  How black the window looked on the lobby, with its white patterns of snow flakes in perpetual succession sliding down the panes.  Who could tell what horrid face might be looking in close to her as she passed, secure in the darkness and that drifting white lace veil of snow?  So nimbly and lightly up the stairs climbed Betty, the cook.

If listeners seldom hear good of themselves, it is also true that peepers sometimes see more than they like; and Betty, the cook, as she reached the landing, glancing askance with ominous curiosity, beheld a spectacle, the sight of which nearly bereft her of her senses.

Crouching in the deep doorway on the right of the lobby, the cook, I say, saw something—­a figure—­or a deep shadow—­only a deep shadow—­or maybe a dog.  She lifted the candle—­she peeped under the candlestick:  ’twas no shadow, as I live, ’twas a well-defined figure!

He was draped in black, cowering low, with the face turned up.  It was Charles Nutter’s face, fixed and stealthy.  It was only while the fascination lasted—­while you might count one, two, three, deliberately—­that the horrid gaze met mutually.  But there was no mistake there.  She saw the stern dark picture as plainly as ever she did.  The light glimmered on his white eye-balls.

Starting up, he struck at the candle with his hat.  She uttered a loud scream, and flinging stick and all at the figure, with a great clang against the door behind, all was swallowed in instantaneous darkness; she whirled into the opposite bed-room she knew not how, and locked the door within, and plunged head-foremost under the bed-clothes, half mad with terror.

The squall was heard of course.  Moggy heard it, but she heeded not; for Betty was known to scream at mice, and even moths.  And as her door was heard to slam, as was usual in panics of the sort, and as she returned no answer, Moggy was quite sure there was nothing in it.

But Moggy’s turn was to come.  When spirits ‘walk,’ I’ve heard they make the most of their time, and sometimes pay a little round of visits on the same evening.