So at last I fetched the shawl from the rack and made him a bed on the stand.  It was what he had been waiting for.  I saw that at once.  He walked onto it, turned around once, lay down, and closed his eyes.

I took up my vigil.  I had been the victim of a fear I was determined to conquer.  The house was quiet.  Maggie had retired shriveled to bed.  The cat slept on the shawl.

And then—­I felt the fear returning.  It welled up through my tranquillity like a flood, and swept me with it.  I wanted to shriek.  I was afraid to shriek.  I longed to escape.  I dared not move.  There had been no sound, no motion.  Things were as they had been.

It may have been one minute or five that I sat there.  I do not know.  I only know that I sat with fixed eyes, not even blinking, for fear of even for a second shutting out the sane and visible world about me.  A sense of deadness commenced in my hands and worked up my arms.  My chest seemed flattened.

Then the telephone bell rang.

The cat leaped to his feet.  Somehow I reached forward and took down the receiver.

“Who is it?” I cried, in a voice that was thin, I knew, and unnatural.

The telephone is not a perfect medium.  It loses much that we wish to register but, also, it registers much that we may wish to lose.  Therefore when I say that I distinctly heard a gasp, followed by heavy difficult breathing, over the telephone, I must beg for credence.  It is true.  Some one at the other end of the line was struggling for breath.

Then there was complete silence.  I realized, after a moment, that the circuit had been stealthily cut, and that my conviction was verified by Central’s demand, a moment later, of what number I wanted.  I was, at first, unable to answer her.  When I did speak, my voice was shaken.

“What number, please?” she repeated, in a bored tone.  There is nothing in all the world so bored as the voice of a small town telephone-operator.

“You called,” I said.

“Beg y’pardon.  Must have been a mistake,” she replied glibly, and cut me off.

II

It may be said, and with truth, that so far I have recorded little but subjective terror, possibly easily explained by my occupancy of an isolated house, plus a few unimportant incidents, capable of various interpretations.  But the fear was, and is today as I look back, a real thing.  As real—­and as difficult to describe—­as a chill, for instance.  A severe mental chill it was, indeed.

I went upstairs finally to a restless night, and rose early, after only an hour or so of sleep.  One thing I was determined on—­to find out, if possible, the connection between the terror and the telephone.  I breakfasted early, and was dressing to go to the village when I had a visitor, no other than Miss Emily herself.  She looked fluttered and perturbed at the unceremonious hour of her visit—­she was the soul of convention—­and explained, between breaths as it were, that she had come to apologize for the day before.  She had hardly slept.  I must forgive her.  She had been very nervous since her brother’s death, and small things upset her.