After he had gone out, I say; and therein lay the key to my growing apprehensions. For not many days had I been in hiding before I discovered that my comrade was a night-walker. He would wait, soft-shut into his room, until he fancied I was drowned in sleep, then list-footed creep out and by the screen--which he had put up to protect me--and either descend by way of the trap, or, less often, mounting the ladder which communicated with the hidden gully, disappear, and pull his means of exit after him. Then I would wait, shivering and wondering through the whole gamut of formless fears, till stupor overtook me, or perhaps by and by, after long hours, a terrified half-consciousness of his stealthy return. Where did he thus nightly go? To what dark business or witches’ frolic? I tormented my brain for the solution, and of my love and loyalty could find none. But the poison of a yet-unrealised fear was working in me early. Now, on this night, waking out of tormented dreams, I was on the instant desperate to solve the mystery. But hardly had I crossed the little cellar when a warning rumble from Portlock, seated in the room beyond, told me that I was discovered. So this vast creature was in the conspiracy! Quite panic-struck, I fled, and, mounting to my room--found George there. He had returned, descending by the ladder, during the minute of my absence. He made no allusion whatever to my escapade; but just laughed softly, and took my cold hand in his, as I stood trembling and aghast before him. “Poor little maid,” he said; “she has been dreaming”--and he led me to my bed, and tucked me in warm, and left me with a kiss. I never thought it necessary to confess; but always after that, as I came to learn, he descended by the trap and _bolted it behind him_. That did not assuage my fears, though it was some comfort henceforth to be spared the pretence of blindness to his flittings--a comfort, I think, to him as well as to me, though his silence on the main point was not to be broken. Ah! if he had only had the courage to set my mind at rest, before its fears grew to a frenzy beyond my control! Now, as time went on, my hearing grew morbidly acute--during the dark hours of his nightly absences, when I was fastened lonely and frightened into my attic, and sleep refused to come to me--to certain shufflings and whisperings--sounds scarce to be distinguished from the wind and the rain--which filtered to me from the depths below. Sometimes it would seem a sough of blown voices; sometimes a suggestion of _dragging_; sometimes the low rumble of a cart on the turf, which set my pulses knocking in my ears. Then when, succeeding an ominous silence, George’s step would come mounting stealthily by the trap, on tiptoe thence to his room, I would shudder in the thought of dreadful footprints going by my screen, and would feign the deep-breathing of slumber, lest he should be moved to stop and call to me softly in the voice I had not yet learned to resist.