But the thunder growled again and my head rose, this time in real alarm.  Not because of that far-off struggle of the elements with which I had nothing to do and hardly sensed, but because of a nearer sound, an indistinguishable yet strangely perturbing sound, suggesting a step—­no, it was a voice, or if not a voice, some equally sure token of an approaching presence on the porch in front.  Some one going by on the road two hundred feet away must have caught the gleam of my lantern through some unperceived crack in the parlour shutters.  In another minute I should hear a shout at the window, or, perhaps, the pounding of a heavy hand on the front door.  I hated the interruption, but otherwise I was but little disturbed.  Whoever it was, he could not by any chance find his way in.  Nevertheless, I discreetly closed the shutter of my lantern and began groping my way back to my own place of exit.  I had reached the dining-room door, when the blood suddenly stopped in my veins.  Another sound had reached my ear; an unmistakable one this time—­the rattling of a key in its lock.  A man—­two men were entering by the great front door.  They came in on a swoop of wind which seemed to carry everything before it.  I heard a loud laugh, coarsened by drink, and the tipsy exclamation of a voice I knew: 

“There! shut the door, can’t you, before it’s blown from its hinges?  You’ll find everything jolly here.  Wine, lights, solitude in which to finish our game and a roaring good opportunity to sleep afterwards.  No servants, no porters, not a soul to disturb us.  This is my house and it’s a corker.  I might be away for a year and”—­here there was the crackling of a match—­“I’ve only to use my night-key to find everything a man wants right to my hand.”

The answer I failed to catch.  I was simply paralysed by terror.  Should their way lay through the drawing-room!  My clay, my tools were all lying there, and my unfinished model.  Mr. Spencer was not an unkind man, but he was very drunk, and I had heard that whisky makes a brute of the most good-natured.  He would trample on my work; perhaps he would destroy my tools and then hunt the house till he found me.  I did not know what to expect; meantime, lights began to flame up; the room where I stood was no longer a safe refuge, and creeping like a cat, I began to move towards the closet door.  Suddenly I made a dart for it; the two men, trampling heavily on the marble floor of the hall were coming my way.  I could hear their rude talk—­rude to me, though one of them called himself a gentleman.  As the door of the room opened to admit them, I succeeded in shutting that of the closet into which I had flung myself,—­or almost so.  I did not dare to latch it, for they were already in the room and might hear me.

“This is the spot for us,” came in Spencer’s most jovial tones.  “Big table, whisky handy, cards right here in my pocket.  Wait, till I strike a light!”

But the lightning anticipated him.  As he spoke, the walls which surrounded me, the walls which surrounded them, leapt into glaring view and I heard the second voice cry out: