Then I think a frenzy must have possessed me, for with a courage not my own I stepped boldly forward and clutched at the empty air. It yielded to my outstretched hands, and I stumbled and struck against a wall, but steadying myself I felt my way forward till my fingers closed on something cold and hard; and again I heard a sad moaning. And then a sudden horror struck like a knife at my heart, for I was gripping the fleshless fingers of a skeleton. I shrieked, and fell to the floor unconscious. It was in Worthing's room that I came to myself, and Worthing was throwing water on my brow. The horror was still upon me, for waking to see his face above me it was as though I were again in that dreadful corridor with the face of the spectre fading from my eyes. I tried to scream, but Worthing clapped his hand to my mouth, and bade me be quiet in a voice of such command that at once I felt in possession of my wits. I sat up and looked about me. "That's better," said Worthing; and added, "So you've had enough of playing the ghost, have you?" At first I didn't understand, and then I cried indignantly, "Worthing!" and with my anger my courage came back to me. "So?" he questioned. "Do you think...." I began. "Think?" he retorted. "I tell you; I swear to you," I blurted out; "I thought I heard you scream, and I came to you. But I lost my way in the dark, and a door closed behind me, and my candle went out, and I saw a face, and I felt a skeleton, and I tell you...." But he laughed cuttingly into my speech: "Well, you've had a bad time of it; you'd better lie down and go to sleep." It was only after long protestation that I succeeded in persuading him to believe my story; and then he seemed strangely uneasy. "There's something I can't understand," he muttered. "Why, it's the ghost," I said easily. "Bah!" he scoffed me down. So we lay down together till the morning, and the wind died away, and the winter sun shone bleakly over a frozen earth. But though we spent the day searching the ruins, for it was Sunday and of course there was no school, we couldn't solve the mystery of the night. We retraced my path as well as I could judge it, but there was no skeleton anywhere; and where Worthing had found me--for hearing my shriek he had come to my aid--there was only a solid wall. "You must have gone clean through there," he said seriously, "otherwise you couldn't have lost your way without tumbling head first from the ruins." But though we shook at it, and examined it for possible springs and locks, the wall refused to give up its secret. The only thing that marked it as different from the adjacent masonry was a patch of little punctures as though a shot-gun had been emptied into it at close range. So we searched and probed and questioned, but discovered nothing; nor did we even find my candle which to Worthing was the greatest confirmation of my story.