She reached the window and lifted her hand to draw the blind. But she started and dropped her arm, letting the shade spring back to the roller. Someone stood on the walk without. His long figure rose in the square of light which, blocked on the piazza, included the breadth of fence where he leaned. His dark, repulsive face was raised to her, and he seemed to fix her with his small, snakelike eyes. The next instant he dropped his goblin shape and shrank writhing away into the gloom. She shivered and her fingers trembled when she reached again for the cord and drew the blind. She went into the hall and pushed the heavy bolt above the lock on the front door. When she had gone through the house and secured every door and window, she came back, still shivering, to the fire. "It is nothing," she told herself, and put her hand on the mantel, reassuring herself as a woman must when denied human support, "it was nothing. The man stopped a moment in passing, attracted by the light. I must have some—courage. But his face—was terrible." Presently she went over to the piano and began to sound the keys; she struck loud, clarion chords, martialling forces to put down her fears. Her shaking fingers grew surer; she commenced to shape a bit of Wagner, and then a fragment of Schubert. That was the music she loved. She opened a folio of sonatas. She played with ease and skill and her frame swayed with a slight, rhythmic motion. Her soul was in her touch and in her eyes, grown large and misty. It was then her face was beautiful. At last she turned a page and a loose sheet fluttered out. It was that sea song of Barry Cornwall’s, that had been a favorite quartette in the old days aboard the _Phantom_. She began to play it, and presently her voice flooded the night. "For the white squall rides on the surging wave, And the bark is ’gulfed in an ocean’s grave, In an ocean’s grave; in an ocean’s grave." Forrest, coming that way from his customary rounds of the mills, heard it, and the passion, the despair of it, held him at the gate. But he dropped his hand from the latch at the end and turned away. "There is nothing I can do for her." he told himself. "She is past feeling the solitude now. She is past being afraid." *CHAPTER XIII* *THE PRESSURE OF THE THUMB-SCREW* The following night Forrest was seated near the open fire in his room off the store. His journal and ledger were on the table before him, and opposite Kingsley tilted his chair comfortably, and clasping his hands at the back of his head, lifted his glance to the lamp-lighted ceiling. He was smoking and looked a trifle bored.