How long I had slept I have no means of judging, before I awoke with a start from a dream in which one of the farmer's six sons--magnified into a giant--had been poising me by the hair over the 'Devil's Hole' at the Spike Rocks. The dream disturbed me so greatly, that for a long time I could not again compose myself; but at length I was just upon the point of relapsing into unconsciousness, when a sound, too confused to be at once explicable, but which appeared to come from the neighbourhood of Mr Morgan's room, struck upon my ear, rousing me in an instant to renewed wakefulness. Wondering what it could be, I strained my attention to listen; but it was not repeated. Presently, however, I became conscious of other sounds, faint in themselves, and partially drowned beneath the wail of the wind, but which, nevertheless, my hearing, rendered acute by anxiety, distinctly reported. They were an intermittent creaking of the distant staircase, accompanied by a shuffling kind of tread upon it, such as might be occasioned by the cautious descent of several persons bearing a heavy weight. That at least was the interpretation which, with a sickening conjecture as to what that weight might be, I put upon these mysterious midnight noises. Slipping from bed, I crossed the room on tiptoe, applied my ear to the crevice of the door, and bent all my faculties to hearken. I am not, I think, a coward; but I must own to experiencing a strong sensation of alarm when, after standing there for a few moments, during which I not only heard the wind whistling through the passage below, but actually felt a powerful draught, I knew from the cessation of both that the entrance-door, which must have been opened, had been again closed. Noiselessly but swiftly I passed over to the window, and pressed my face against it, in the hope of discovering who and _what_ it was that had left the house at so strange an hour. But the night was pitchy dark; I could see nothing beyond a foot from the pane; and shivering, less from exposure to the cold than from a horrible idea which had taken possession of me, I crept back to bed. Several hours appeared to have elapsed, though I have no doubt it was in reality less than half a one, before, by an intuitive perception, I became aware that the individuals who had quitted the farm had returned to it. Trembling with dread, none the less overwhelming from its being in a measure vague, I once more concentrated all my powers upon the act of listening, and was soon informed by my terror-quickened senses that the stairs were again creaking--this time beneath a lighter tread. Then--yes! I was sure of it--a stealthy step was coming down the passage, slowly approaching my room! It paused before the door, and in another instant a wary hand was at work upon the fastener. Some kind of instrument had been inserted between the door and its frame, by means of which the bolt was being gradually pushed backwards in the socket.