"Come along, then," said Godfrey peremptorily. "You're right--that cut
must be attended to," and he started toward the house.

"Wait!" Swain called after him, with unexpected vigour. "We must take
down the ladders. We mustn't leave them here."

"Why not?"

"If they're found, they'll suspect--they'll know ..." He stopped,
stammering, and again his voice trailed away into a mumble, as though
beyond his control.

Godfrey looked at him for a moment, and I could guess at the surprise
and suspicion in his eyes. I myself was ill at ease, for there was
something in Swain's face--a sort of vacant horror and dumb
shrinking--that filled me with a vague repulsion. And then to see his
jaw working, as he tried to form articulate words and could not, sent
a shiver over my scalp.

"Very well," Godfrey agreed, at last. "We'll take the ladders, since
you think it so important. You take that one, Lester, and I'll take
this."

I stooped to raise the ladder to my shoulder, when suddenly, cutting
the darkness like a knife, came a scream so piercing, so vibrant with
fear, that I stood there crouching, every muscle rigid. Again the
scream came, more poignant, more terrible, wrung from a woman's throat
by the last extremity of horror; and then a silence sickening and
awful. What was happening in that silence?