It was long enough before sleep visited me that night. For nearly half
an hour I stood at my open window looking across a moon-bathed slope
to where a tower projected, ghostly, above the fringe of the woods.
The landlord had informed me that it was Friar's Park which could thus
be seen peeping out from the trees, and as I stood watching that
sentinel tower a thousand strange ideas visited me.

The curious air of loneliness of which I had become conscious at the
moment of my arrival, was emphasized now that the residents in the
district had retired to their scattered habitations. No sound of bird
or beast disturbed the silence. From the time that the footsteps of
Martin the landlord had passed my door as he mounted heavily to his
bed-chamber, no sound had reached me but the muffled ticking of a
grandfather's clock upon the landing outside my room. And even this
sound, the only one intruding upon the stillness, I weaved into my
imaginings, so that presently it began to resemble the ticking of the
clock on the mantelpiece in that gruesome room at the Red House.

The view which I commanded was an extensive one and although in the
clear country air I could quite easily discern the upstanding wing of
Friar's Park, actually the house and the park were some two miles
distant. Where the park ended and the woods began it was impossible to
determine, yet such was my curious mood that I lingered there
endeavoring to puzzle out those details which were veiled from me by
distance.

To-morrow, I thought, I should be seeking admittance to that house
among the trees. In fact so great was my anxiety to plumb the depths
of the mystery in the hope of recovering some new fact which should
exculpate Coverly, that nothing but the unseemly lateness of the hour