anger.

Meanwhile I had been attentively scrutinizing the house thus
pointedly brought to my notice.

I had seen it many times before, but, as it happened, had never
stopped to look at it when the huge trees surrounding it were
shrouded in darkness. The black hollow of its disused portal looked
out from shadows which acquired some of their somberness from the
tragic memories connected with its empty void.

Its aspect was scarcely reassuring. Not that superstition lent its
terrors to the lonely scene, but that through the blank panes of the
window, alternately appearing and disappearing from view as the
shutter pointed out by Uncle David blew to and fro in the wind, I
saw, or was persuaded that I saw, a beam of light which argued an
unknown presence within walls which had so lately been declared
unfit for any man's habitation.

"You are right," I now remarked to the uneasy figure at my side.
"Some one is prowling through the house yonder. Can it possibly be
Mrs. Jeffrey or her husband?"

"At night and with no gas in the house? Hardly."

The words were natural, but the voice was not. Neither was his
manner quite suited to the occasion. Giving him another sly glance,
and marking how uneasily he edged away from me in the darkness, I
cried out more cheerily than he possibly expected: