Of a sudden, however, as he lay ransacking his memory for the least detail of the conversation, it occurred to him that he had left the lamp burning in the parlour. He felt for the matches at his bedside, and as he opened the box he heard a light sound as of a cautious step rise through the open window. He struck a match, it flared up into a flame and the sound was repeated more distinctly--a hurried shuffle of the pebbles. Gordon remained quite still in his bed, and the match burned down to his fingers. But there was no further movement. Then he rose and crept to the window. The night was like a bandage before his eyes. But after a while it thinned to a veil, and he made out the barn wall facing him (for his room lay at the side of the house), and as he watched something moved from the shadow of it, stood for a second in the open opposite the window, and then slipped round the corner of the barn and disappeared down the lane. It could be no one but Hawke, Gordon thought. The man's own remark flashed into his mind. "I suppose that you and I are the only living beings awake for ten miles round." For some reason he had been waiting until all was quiet in the house. Gordon flung on his clothes hurriedly, lit the candle, and went downstairs. But as he pushed open the door of the parlour a sudden gust of wind extinguished the light in his hand. The room was in darkness; only facing where he stood there was a panel of twilight, and through it he could see the boughs of trees rising and falling. The door into the lane stood open, and the lamp had been turned out. Gordon stood fixed there in a panic, listening. But no sound menaced him. Inside, the beat of the clock merely emphasized the silence; outside, the wind moaned among the hills with a dreary lift and drop, like surf upon a distant beach. He walked through the garden and strained his eyes up and down the road. No moving thing was visible, but he remembered that Hawke had scanned the surroundings too, and he hung on the gate, charged with expectancy. After a time he noticed a white speck in the black of the opposite field. He observed it casually at first, but it grew larger and approached him, and shaped itself into the figure of a woman. She climbed over a stile in the boundary wall facing the gate and brushed quickly by without noticing his presence. She was closely muffled in a large shawl, so that Gordon could see nothing of her face. But it struck him, from the momentary glimpse of her which he caught as she swung past him, that there was something familiar in her gait and bearing. The perception was a spark to the train of his fears. They flashed into one monstrous conjecture. Gordon thrust it down; it sprang up again and clutched at his throat, stifling him.