believed to be in hiding somewhere within these walls, was improving the
opportunity to escape?

If I asked myself this question, I did not answer it, but I doubt if I
asked it then. I had forgotten the intruder; the interest which had
carried me thus far had become lost in a fresher one of which the
beginning and ending lay hidden within the four walls I now stared upon,
unseeing. Not to see and yet to feel--did that make the horror? If so,
another lighted match must help me out. I struck one while the thought
was hot within me, and again took a look at the room.

I noted but one thing new, but that made me reel back till I was half way
into the hall. Then a certain dogged persistency I possess came to my
rescue, and I re-entered the room at a leap and stood before the lounge
and its pile of cushions. They were numerous,--all that the room
contained, and more! Chairs had been stripped, window-seats denuded, and
the whole collection disposed here in a set way which struck me as
unnatural. Was this the janitor's idea? I hardly thought so, and was
about to pluck one of these cushions off, when that most unreasonable
horror seized me again and I found myself looking back over my shoulder
at the fireplace from which rose a fading streak of smoke which some
passing gust, perhaps, had blown out into the room.

I felt sick. Was it the smell? It was not that of burning wood, hardly of
burning paper, I--but here my second match went out.

Thoroughly roused now (you will say, by what?) I felt my way out of the
room and to the head of the staircase. I remembered the candle and
candlestick I had heard thrown down on the lower floor by Carmel
Cumberland. I would secure them and come back and settle these uncanny