The figures of the man and the dogs were equally vivid in each.  Though I could no longer doubt they were nothing mortal, they were altogether unlike what I had imagined ghosts.  Like the generality of people who are psychic and who have never had an experience of the superphysical, my conception of a phantasm was a “thing” in white that made ridiculous groanings and still more ridiculous clankings of chains.  But here was something different, something that looked—­save, perhaps, for the excessive pallor of its cheeks—­just like an ordinary man.  I knew it was not a man, partly on account of its extraordinary performance—­no man, even if running at full speed, could keep up with us like that; partly on account of the unusual nature of the atmosphere—­which was altogether indefinable—­it brought with it; and also because of my own sensations—­my intense horror which could not, I felt certain, have been generated by anything physical.

I cogitated all this in my mind as I gazed at the figure, and in order to make sure it was no hallucination, I shut first one eye and then the other, covering them alternately with the palm of my hand.  The figure, however, was still there, still pacing along at our side with the regular swing, swing of the born walker.  We kept on in this fashion till we arrived at a rusty iron gate leading, by means of a weed-covered path, to a low, two-storied white house.  Here the figures left us, and as it seemed to me vanished at the foot of the garden wall.

“This is the house,” Mr. Baldwin panted, pulling up with the greatest difficulty, the horse evincing obvious antipathy to the iron gate.  “And these are the keys.  I’m afraid you must go in alone, as I dare not leave the animal even for a minute.”

“Oh, all right,” I said.  “I don’t mind, now that the ghost, or whatever you like to call it, has gone; I’m myself again.”

I jumped down, and threading my way along the bramble-entangled path, reached the front door.  On opening it, I hesitated.  The big, old-fashioned hall, with the great, frowning staircase leading to the gallery overhead, the many open doors showing nought but bare, deserted boards within, the grim passages, all moonlit and peopled only with queer flickering shadows, suggested much that was terrifying.  I fancied I heard noises, noises like stealthy footsteps moving from room to room, and tiptoeing along the passages and down the staircase.  Once my heart almost stopped beating as I saw what, at first, I took to be a white face peering at me from a far recess, but which I eventually discovered was only a daub of whitewash; and, once again, my hair all but rose on end, when one of the doors at which I was looking swung open and something came forth.  Oh, the horror of that moment, as long as I live I shall never forget it.  The something was a cat, just a rather lean but otherwise material, black Tom; yet, in the state my nerves were then, it created almost as much horror as if it had been