“Why, what in the world----” she said. Then pulling a window curtain aside she peeped out. “There’s only the Ailsa there,” she said, “dark and quiet. And only the Ilsa here,” she added, peeping through the opposite curtain, “dark and quiet.” I looked at her, marvelling at the want of imagination in women that renders it possible for them to go on being stolid in the presence of what seemed undoubtedly the supernatural. Unconsciously this stolidity, however, made me feel more like myself; but when on her going to the door and unbolting it and looking out she made an exclamation and hastily shut it again, I sank back on my pillow once more _hors de combat_, so great was the shock. Face me, I say, with cannon, and I can do anything but expect nothing of me if it is ghosts. “Otto,” she whispered, holding the door, “come and look.” I could not speak. “Get up and come and look,” she whispered again. Well my friends I had to, or lose forever my moral hold of and headship over her. Besides, I was drawn somehow to the fatal door. How I got out of my berth and along the cold floor of the caravan to the end I cannot conceive. I was obliged to help myself along, I remember, by sliding my hand over the surface of the yellow box. I muttered, I remember, “I am ill--I am ill,” and truly never did a man feel more so. And when I got to the door and looked through the crack she opened, what did I see? I saw the whole of the lower windows of the farmhouse ablaze with candles. CHAPTER XVIII