There was a splintering crash and a cry and the clang as of a door heavily closing; and my father was awake and shouting, "Why, what, Tommy?" I was out of bed and had the candle lit; and there before me was the great mirror with a wide jagged hole smashed in the middle of it, and with cracks like the threads of a spider's web running out in every direction across its face. I stood looking at it stupidly, and said, "I don't quite know, daddy. I thought it was her ghost." "Ghost?" he cried. "Bite-in-the-Dark," I answered. "I saw her ghost." "Ha!" he exclaimed. "Yes," I said growing bolder. "She was there. She was coming towards me. She had her hand raised. She came very slowly. I could see her face. I know it was her." But my father was looking away from the mirror towards his end of the room, where the large old oaken wardrobe filled the recess between the fireplace and the door. His attention seemed absorbed. And then he leapt out of bed and flung the wardrobe open, springing back quickly as though expecting something to jump out at him. But there was nothing unusual there. "What is it, daddy?" I asked. But he took no notice of me, still investigating the wardrobe, rummaging among the coats that were hung there, and tapping at the sides. Then he stepped away from it and looked all about it, scrutinizing it as though it held a secret, while I watched him at a loss to understand. And presently he went up to it again, and putting out his full strength tried to shift it; but it wouldn't stir. "Come and help me, Tommy," he said; and I lent him what strength I had, but to no purpose. "You see, it's fixed," he said, as though that solved the mystery. "But ..." I began. "What, Tommy, can't you see?" he asked with a smile. And then I saw what I had done. I had fired at a reflection, while the substance had escaped. And evidently my father thought he knew which way; yet there was no clue to the trail. We didn't go to bed again that night, but went downstairs to the dining-room and rekindled the embers of the fire, and roasted ourselves before it till the morning. And then my father, breaking a long silence, said, "Tommy, I must leave you. The time has come. The game's against me." "Is it the curse?" I asked. He nodded. So before evening I found myself an inmate of Rancey Bridge, feeling inexpressibly disconsolate with my father gone out of my life. And I know I cried bitterly to myself that night; for I pictured him fleeing alone into the darkness, and behind him the shadow of a closing doom. PART II CAPTAIN FIELD CHAPTER XII THE WAY OF A FRIEND