"This--as I tell you," she answered, her eyes fixed on mine. "Send every one else out of the house--only before they go, I want everything taken out of this room of mine--all the furniture, all the rugs, all the pictures. I want the blinds drawn everywhere, the doors bolted. For three weeks I want no person to come across the threshold. I want you to stay that long indoors--in this house. Mr. Estabrook will not come back during that time, and to all others I want you to say that he is away and that I am away, too,--or ill,--or anything that will seem best to you. I never want you to come near my locked door unless I call for you." "But, Mrs. Estabrook!" I cried, my lips all of a tremble. "Wait," she said. There was a look in her eyes that seemed to go into me like a knife. "Come to my door every morning. Bring a glass of milk. Knock. If I do not answer, have the door broken down! That is all; do you hear?" "Mercy on us!" I cried. "Tell me what this means. Are you mad?" She put her soft hand on my cheek for a second. "No," said she, with a voice growing as hard as the rattling of wire nails. "Do as I say. Do it for the sake of the lives of all of us!" I believed then that she was sane. There was something in her eyes, as I have said, that would have tamed a tiger. I got up. I did everything she had asked. The furnishings were all moved out of her room until it looked as bare as a place to rent in December. There was nothing on the floor but a mattress and a chair, which were left by her directions. I sent the servants away with instructions to come back after three weeks' time. At last, when all was done and I was alone, walking through the house like a sour-faced ghost, I climbed the stairs to her door. It was locked! I have not caught sight of her face since! I cannot tell any one what I have been through in these days of waiting. I only know it has been like a terrible dream--like those dreams that make the perspiration come out on the forehead with the struggle to wake or cry out or toss the smothering thing from off a body's lungs and heart. And till now, in spite of all, I have been faithful enough to my trust. I have turned away all the visitors that came. I have gone each morning to my mistress's door for orders that were spoken through the panels. I have walked up and down the silent rooms below, day after day, or sat in the library trying to read and listening to the tread of some one in that awful room above, with every hour dragging as if the hands of the clock on the mantel were slipping back almost as fast as they moved forward. Then the steps would stop and the clock would go on with its everlasting ticking. And if I listened hard, I could hear the big clock in the hall take up the tune like a duet. Then the one in the front room above would join in, then the one in the kitchen, until there was such a clamor of ticking that it would drive a body to distraction with a sound like a hundred typewriters all going at once.