“What about that face Lizzie said you saw last night at the window?” she asked in a steady voice.

Billy grinned, as if slightly embarrassed.  “Just face—­that’s all.”

“A—­man’s face?”

He shrugged again.

“Don’t know—­maybe.  It there!  It gone!”

Miss Cornelia did not want to believe him—­but she did.  “Did you go out after it?” she persisted.

Billy’s yellow grin grew wider.  “No thanks,” he said cheerfully with ideal succinctness.

Lizzie, meanwhile, had stood first on one foot and then on the other during the interrogation, terror and morbid interest fighting in her for mastery.  Now she could hold herself in no longer.

“Oh, Miss Neily!” she exploded in a graveyard moan, “last night when the lights went out I had a token!  My oil lamp was full of oil but, do what I would, it kept going out, too—­the minute I shut my eyes out that lamp would go.  There ain’t a surer token of death!  The Bible says, ’Let your light shine’—­and when a hand you can’t see puts your lights out—­good night!”

She ended in a hushed whisper and even Billy looked a trifle uncomfortable after her climax.

“Well, now that you’ve cheered us up,” began Miss Cornelia undauntedly, but a long, ominous roll of thunder that rattled the panes in the French windows drowned out the end of her sentence.  Nevertheless she welcomed the thunder as a diversion.  At least its menace was a physical one—­to be guarded against by physical means.

She rose and went over to the French windows.  That flimsy bolt!  She parted the curtains and looked out—­a flicker of lightning stabbed the night—­the storm must be almost upon them.

“Bring some candles, Billy,” she said.  “The lights may be going out any moment—­and Billy,” as he started to leave, “there’s a gentleman arriving on the last train.  After he comes you may go to bed.  I’ll wait up for Miss Dale—­oh, and Billy,” arresting him at the door, “see that all the outer doors on this floor are locked and bring the keys here.”

Billy nodded and departed.  Miss Cornelia took a long breath.  Now that the moment for waiting had passed—­the moment for action come —­she felt suddenly indomitable, prepared to face a dozen Bats!

Her feelings were not shared by her maid.  “I know what all this means,” moaned Lizzie.  “I tell you there’s going to be a death, sure!”

“There certainly will be if you don’t keep quiet,” said her mistress acidly.  “Lock the billiard-room windows and go to bed.”

But this was the last straw for Lizzie.  A picture of the two long, dark flights of stairs up which she had to pass to reach her bedchamber rose before her—­and she spoke her mind.

“I am not going to bed!” she said wildly.  “I’m going to pack up tomorrow and leave this house.”  That such a threat would never be carried out while she lived made little difference to her—­she was beyond the need of Truth’s consolations.  “I asked you on my bended knees not to take this place two miles from a railroad,” she went on heatedly.  “For mercy’s sake, Miss Neily, let’s go back to the city before it’s too late!”