Jack Dillon came to Hollow Grange on a thunderous black evening when an ebony cloud crested the hill-top above, and, catching the upflung rays of sunset, glowed redly like the pall of Avalon in the torchlight. Through the dense ranks of firs cloaking the slopes a breeze, presaging the coming storm, whispered evilly, and here in the hollow the birds were still. The man who had driven him from the station glanced at him, with a curiosity thinly veiled. "What about your things, sir?" he inquired. Dillon stared rather blankly at the ivy-covered lodge, which, if appearances were to be trusted, was unoccupied. "Wait a moment; I will ring," he said curtly; for this furtive curiosity, so ill concealed, had manifested itself in the manner of the taxi-driver from the moment that Dillon had directed him to drive to Hollow Grange. He pushed open the gate and tugged at the iron ring which was suspended from the wall of the lodge. A discordant clangour rewarded his efforts, the cracked note of a bell that spoke from somewhere high up in the building, that seemed to be buffeted to and fro from fir to fir, until it died away, mournfully, in some place of shadows far up the slope. In the voice of the bell there was something furtive, something akin to the half-veiled curiosity in the eyes of the man who stood watching him; something fearful, too, in both, as though man and bell would whisper: "Return! Beware of disturbing the dwellers in this place." But Dillon angrily recalled himself to the realities. He felt that these ghostly imaginings were born of the Boche-maltreated flesh, were products of lowered tone; that he would have perceived no query in the glance of the taxi-driver and heard no monkish whisper in the clang of the bell had he been fit, had he been fully recovered from the effects of his wound. Monkish whisper? Yes, that was it--his mind had supplied, automatically, an aptly descriptive term: the cracked bell spoke with the voice of ancient monasteries, had in it the hush of cloisters and the sigh of renunciation. "Hang it all!" muttered Dillon. "This won't do." A second time he awoke the ghostly bell-voice, but nothing responded to its call; man, bird, and beast had seemingly deserted Hollow Grange. He was conscious of a sudden nervous irritation, as he turned brusquely and met the inquiring glance of the taxi-man. "I have arrived before I was expected," he said. "If you will put my things in the porch here I will go up to the house and get a servant to fetch them. They will be safe enough in the meantime."