I shrank back, at a loss to understand, but my amazement was cut short by a great figure springing out of the dark, and I heard a faint cry, and footsteps crashing away through the night. At last all was silent again, and I was alone. I stood still wondering what it could all mean. Then the door of the house opened; or the inn, I should say, for it must have been an inn; and dark figures appeared against the sudden light talking excitedly. I slunk into the shadow, thinking it best to make my escape from such a place, not knowing what dangers might be lurking for me there. And then I felt a warm hand in my own, and my father's voice was whispering "Shhh!" For a moment I stood fixed to earth, my blood in a whirl; then turning I flung my arms about my father, and buried my face against him to stifle the sound of my glad sobbing; for I was unstrung by the agony and excitement of the past few hours, and the revulsion of feeling was too much for my self-control. But I soon mastered myself sufficiently to creep quietly away, holding my father tight by the hand, fearing lest somehow he might escape me again. The night was warm, for the summer weather wasn't over, though the year was advancing; and we lay beneath the heather. And there my father told me something of the story, while the burning inn still reddened under the sky. "You see, I'm dead now," he said. "I died in the fire." "Daddy!" I exclaimed in terror, clutching him; for I was a superstitious child, and it would have seemed no very strange thing for me to be talking to my father's ghost. He laughed: "Not dead to you, Tommy." And then I understood. "But to Shadow-of-Fear?" I said. "You've got it," he answered; and explained how rushing back through the fire to our room he had climbed out of the window which opened on a back-yard, no one seeing him, and had hidden himself in the heather. His plan was to have found me, and together we would have fled away, every one supposing we had perished in the flames. But somehow he had missed me, and later seeing me with Picardino he had stalked us, hoping somehow to steal me back, but fearing that his ruse had failed. But one question worried me. "Did you really burn it on purpose?" I asked. "Ah!" was all he replied. And I fell asleep, too tired and confused to solve the hundred mysteries which were beating in my mind. Who fired the inn? And why? And how was it Picardino had returned and carried me away? And why had he vanished so suddenly? CHAPTER IX SUNSET TOWERS