She rocked herself back and forth in the kitchen-chair, weeping.  She had set the candle on the table, and a draught of wind from some unknown quarter struck it and the strangest lights and shadows flared and flickered over the room and ceiling.  Presently, Charlotte, looking at them, became diverted again from her grief.  She looked about fearfully.  Then she made a tremendous effort, rose, and lighted a lamp.  With that the room was not so frightful, yet it was still not normal.  The familiar homely articles of furniture assumed strange appearances.  She saw something on the range, a little object which filled her with such unreasoning horror that it was almost sheer insanity.  It was simply because she could not for the moment imagine what the little object, which had nothing in the least frightful about it, could be.  Finally she rose and looked, and it was only a little iron spoon which she must have dropped there.  She removed it, but still the horror was over her.  She lifted the cover from the dish of meat, and again the tears came.

“Poor papa! poor papa!” she said.

Then she carried the lamp into the dining-room, and went into the parlor.  She had made herself quite satisfied that there was in reality nothing menacing in the house except her own fears.  She would sit beside one of the front windows in the parlor, in the dark, in order that she might not be seen, and she would watch for her father, and she would also watch for any one who might approach the house with any harmful intent.

Charlotte curled herself up in a large chair beside the window which commanded the best view of the grounds and the drive.  With the light of the young moon there was really no possibility that anything could approach unseen by her, unless by way of the fields from the back.  But that she did not think of.  Her mind became again concentrated upon her father and the possibility of either his return on the next train or a telegram explaining his absence.  She knew that the next train from New York was due in Banbridge at a few minutes after eight.  She had no time-table, but she remembered Major Arms arriving once, and she was quite certain that the train was due at eight-seventeen.  It might, of course, be late.  She reflected, with a sense of solid comfort, that the trains were rather more apt to be late than not.  She need not give up hope of her father’s arriving on this train until even nine o’clock, for besides the possibility of the lateness there was also that of his walking rather than taking a carriage from the station.  In fact, he would probably walk, since he was still in Samson Rawdy’s debt.  She might allow at least twenty minutes for the walk from the station.  She might allow more even than that.  She sat at the window, and waited, peering out.  There was a singular half-dusk rather than half-light from the new moon.  The moon itself was not visible from where she sat, for the window faced north, but she could see over