’It was from her, too, that I learned that fear had not yet left the world.  She was fearless enough in the daylight, and she had the oddest confidence in me; for once, in a foolish moment, I made threatening grimaces at her, and she simply laughed at them.  But she dreaded the dark, dreaded shadows, dreaded black things.  Darkness to her was the one thing dreadful.  It was a singularly passionate emotion, and it set me thinking and observing.  I discovered then, among other things, that these little people gathered into the great houses after dark, and slept in droves.  To enter upon them without a light was to put them into a tumult of apprehension.  I never found one out of doors, or one sleeping alone within doors, after dark.  Yet I was still such a blockhead that I missed the lesson of that fear, and in spite of Weena’s distress I insisted upon sleeping away from these slumbering multitudes.

’It troubled her greatly, but in the end her odd affection for me triumphed, and for five of the nights of our acquaintance, including the last night of all, she slept with her head pillowed on my arm.  But my story slips away from me as I speak of her.  It must have been the night before her rescue that I was awakened about dawn.  I had been restless, dreaming most disagreeably that I was drowned, and that sea anemones were feeling over my face with their soft palps.  I woke with a start, and with an odd fancy that some greyish animal had just rushed out of the chamber.  I tried to get to sleep again, but I felt restless and uncomfortable.  It was that dim grey hour when things are just creeping out of darkness, when everything is colourless and clear cut, and yet unreal.  I got up, and went down into the great hall, and so out upon the flagstones in front of the palace.  I thought I would make a virtue of necessity, and see the sunrise.

’The moon was setting, and the dying moonlight and the first pallor of dawn were mingled in a ghastly half-light.  The bushes were inky black, the ground a sombre grey, the sky colourless and cheerless.  And up the hill I thought I could see ghosts.  There several times, as I scanned the slope, I saw white figures.  Twice I fancied I saw a solitary white, ape-like creature running rather quickly up the hill, and once near the ruins I saw a leash of them carrying some dark body.  They moved hastily.  I did not see what became of them.  It seemed that they vanished among the bushes.  The dawn was still indistinct, you must understand.  I was feeling that chill, uncertain, early-morning feeling you may have known.  I doubted my eyes.

’As the eastern sky grew brighter, and the light of the day came on and its vivid colouring returned upon the world once more, I scanned the view keenly.  But I saw no vestige of my white figures.  They were mere creatures of the half light.  “They must have been ghosts,” I said; “I wonder whence they dated.”  For a queer notion of Grant Allen’s came into my head, and amused