"What will it do, Mother Kyle?" Her big violet eyes came to me, with a naked horror pleading in them. "One day," she whispered, "I went down into the cellar, and it saw me through the bars. It wanted me, Clay! It tried to break out. For days it howled, and wouldn't touch its food. "I'm afraid, Clay." Her tense, trembling arms slipped around my neck, and her frightened eyes went back to Sarah Kyle. Her thin lips still were pursed. "I don't know what it will do," her thin voice said slowly. "It is cunning, and aflame with demon lusts. You're in danger, Valyne. Go back to your room, and lock the door. The rest of us must try to find it. The doctor and the servants are searching, now. "And you must be careful for yourself, Clay. It was friendly, a while ago--it knew its own blood. But if it learns that you love Valyne, its affection will turn to jealous rage.... "_Listen!_" The whispered warning fell suddenly, and for a moment we were silent in the frosty room. "I thought I heard it," said Sarah Kyle. "We must hasten. You must keep with me, Clay. The doctor thinks it will come to you." In a shivering voice, Valyne said: "Let me go with you." "No, darling," protested the old woman; "you must keep out of its sight. Remember, once it went mad at sight of you. If it saw you again, we could never quiet it. And it might harm you." Valyne acquiesced, and we took her to her room. She kissed me, and her lips were cold. "Remember your promise, Clay," she whispered. "And tomorrow we shall go away together. Don't let it harm you!" We heard the lock snap in her door, and went down the stairs. Sarah Kyle took a kerosene lamp from the dining-table. "We shall go to the cellar to begin." Her bright, sunken eyes darted at me suddenly. "Have ye any sense for it, Clay? Any intuition from the common blood? Do ye think that ye could trail it?" "I don't know." My dazed brain was still spinning blindly along the black, swift river of horror. "The doctor says it will come to you," she was saying. "And when it comes, I can calm it. It ever heeded me----" "It won't come to nobody," put in the flat, mannish voice of big Josepha Hand, who had just appeared out of the dark hall. "It wants that girl! It smelled the odor of her on _him_, when he came to speak to it. It broke out to git her, and it won't come to nobody----" * * * * * Sarah Kyle led the way down the steps, and I carried the lamp into the walled-off cell. The heavy door had been crushed outward, torn from its hinges as if by some terrific projectile. A broken length of rusty iron chain lay across the threshold. Beyond was a rude wooden trough, which had been overturned, to spill dark, clotted blood across the foul stone floor.