Pinckney rose up, went to the book-case and placed his fingers on top of it, then he looked at his fingers and the bar of dust upon them, brushed his hand clean and came back to his chair by the fire. He heard the stable clock striking eleven. The sound of the wind that had been raging outside all during dinner time had died away and the sounds of the house made themselves manifest, the hundred stealthy accountable and unaccountable little sounds that night evolves from an old house set in the stillness of the country. Just as the night jasmine gives up its perfume to the night, so does an old house its past in the form of murmurs and crackings and memories and suggestions. Notwithstanding Dunn's attentions there were rats alive in the cellars and under the boarding--and mice; the passages leading to the kitchen premises made a whispering gallery where murderers seemed consulting together if the scullery window were forgotten and left open--as it usually was, and boards in the uneven flooring that had been preparing for the act for weeks and months would suddenly "go off with a bang," a noise startling in the dead of night as the crack of a pistol, and produced, heaven knows how, but never by daylight. Even Pinckney, who did not believe in ghosts, became aware as he sat now by the fire that the old house was feeling for him to make him creep, feeling for him with its old disjointed fingers and all the artfulness of inanimate things. He was aware that Sir Nicholas Berknowles was looking down at him with the terrible patient gaze of a portrait, and he returned the gaze, trying to imagine what manner of man this might have been and how he had lived and what he had done in those old days that were once real sunlit days filled with people with real voices, hearts, and minds. A gentle creak as though a light step had pressed upon the flooring of the hall brought his mind back to reality and he was rising from his chair to retire for the night when a sound from outside the window made him sit down again. It was the sound of a step on the gravel path, a step stealthy and light, a real sound and no contraption of the imagination. The idea of burglars sprang up in his mind, but was dismissed; that was no burglar's footstep--and yet! He listened. The sound had ceased and now came a faint rubbing as of a hand feeling for the window followed by the sharp rapping of a knuckle on the glass. "Hullo," cried Pinckney, jumping to his feet and approaching the shuttered window. "Who's there?" "It's me," said a voice. "I'm locked out. Byrne's bolted the front door. Go to the hall door, will you, please, and let me in?" "Phyl," said Pinckney to himself. "Good heavens!" Then to the other, "I'm coming."