It had risen, swiftly and silently, like death in the night--a horrible sinister face, I thought it, in the first shock of discovery. The eyes were searchingly alive; the upper lip was lifted, showing the teeth; the mist of its breath shrank and dilated on the pane as the wind took it. I held my own, staring in a sort of awful trance. The eyes in the motionless head whipped to and fro, as if hurrying to penetrate and devour the substance of the room’s every shadow. Fortunately the one in which I sat was too dense for their resolving. I congratulated myself on my dead hearth, though, for whatever reason, I was shivering all through. But over and over again the eyes passed me by, and I knew that I was not yet discovered. And then suddenly they were gone, and I heard stealthy steps coming round by the door; and I rose quietly, with a shamefaced oath for my cowardice, and waited to see what would happen. Reassurance as to the human nature of the apparition had broken all the spell; and now I feared nothing but to be balked of recognition in my turn. The man tried the door, gently but unavailingly, for I had bolted it, and then in a moment I heard him going away through the woodland. At that I stole upstairs, and, peering warily from my bedroom window, made out his figure pressing up the path towards the “Baby’s Garden.” And even in that first glance I recognised him. It was the man Dalston, who had been of the company on the night of old Carnac’s seizure. I stuck there a little, smitten with astonishment. What on earth was the fellow doing here, prying, and using the place as if it were his own? Then, too, I had not on that one occasion read into his face any such suggestion of evil--naked and incontinent--as it had seemed to convey to me through the window. On the contrary, it had appeared a fine and handsome face, bold, if bold at all, with the natural self-reliance of a favoured worldling. But, no doubt, my overwrought fancy was to account for the present impression.