Mona turned back, closed her door quietly, and then, summoning all her courage, she walked to the window and drew the heavy curtains aside. The hoops from which they hung rattled noisily over the pole. Putting her face close to the glass, and shading her eyes from the light of the lamp behind her, she looked out. She saw that the snow had fallen since the lamp had been lit at dusk. There was snow on the ground, and thin snow on the leafless boughs of the trees. She could see nothing else. She even pushed up the sash, and called: "Who is there?" But there came no answer. The wind moaned about the house, and the sea rumbled in the distance. She pulled the sash down again. Then, leaving the curtain back, she turned again into the room, and partly to divert her mind from the mysterious apprehensions that had seized it, she sat down at the little harpsichord that stood on the farther side of the ingle against the wall that ran at right angles from the window. At first her fingers ran nervously over the keys, but they gained force as she went on, and the volume of sound seemed to dissipate her fears. "It is nothing," she thought. "I have been troubled about what Ewan said to-day, and I'm nervous--that is all." And as she played her eyes looked not at the finger-board, but across her shoulder toward the bare window. Then suddenly there came to her a sensation that made her flesh creep. It was as if from the darkness outside there were eyes which she could not see looking steadily in upon her where she sat. Her blood rushed to her head, she felt dizzy, the playing ceased, and she clung by one hand to the candle-rest of the harpsichord. Then once more she distinctly heard the same deep, tremulous voice call her by her name--"Mona! Mona!" Faint and all but reeling, she rose again, and again made her way to the bedroom. As before, the child was restless in her sleep. It seemed as if all the air were charged. Mona had almost fallen from fright, when all at once she heard a sound that she could not mistake, and instantly she recovered some self-possession. It was the sound of the window of her sitting-room being thrown open from without. She ran back, and saw Dan Mylrea climbing into the room. "Dan!" she cried. "Mona." "Did you call?" "When?" "Now--a little while ago?" "No." A great trembling shook Dan's whole frame. Mona perceived it, and a sensation of disaster not yet attained to the clearness of an idea took hold of her. "Where is Ewan?" she said. He tried to avoid her gaze. "Why do you ask for him?" said Dan, in a faltering voice. "Where is he?" she asked again. He grew dizzy, and laid hold of the settle for support. The question she asked was that which he had come to answer, but his tongue clave to his mouth. Very pale and almost rigid from the heaviness of a great fear which she felt but could not understand, she watched him when he reeled like a drunken man.