"He doesn't matter, for we shall soon be gone." I caught her precious warmth close to my heart. "Let's go--now!" I urged her, on a sudden impulse. "We can hire a car in the village, to take us down to the railroad." "Clay----" she began, and hesitated doubtfully. "I'm afraid of Creston," I told her. "I don't know why. But I've always dreaded returning--as much as I love you, Valyne! Every minute here is a torture to me. Let's go--today--right now!" I could find no words for the singular dread that was seeping into me from the town's somber antiquity, from the forbidding gloom of these immemorial forested hills. I yearned to shake off the squalid poverty of Creston, its desolate, haunting decrepitude. I hungered for the lights and the bustle and the laughter of a city that was alive. But my feeling was more than that. It was horror of the brooding evil that lurked like an invisible spider in this vale of desolation. And Valyne shared my dread. Her hand grew tight on mine. "I'm glad you've come, Clay!" she whispered tremulously. "I'll be so glad to get away. You can't realize what it has been to wait, these last few months, in Doctor Kyle's house! The terror----" With a little frightened gasp, she checked the words. "But we can't go tonight, Clay. The doctor and his wife will want to see you, after all these years----" "We must," I said. "Doctor Kyle doesn't want us to marry, Valyne----" Her face had grown paler, and her violet eyes looked down at the road. "I know," she whispered. "I know! And I have promised him that I won't marry you, until you have come and talked with him." "If we must," I yielded. "But there can't be any sane reason, Valyne--I know it!" Hand in hand, we walked slowly up the steep, rutted road, toward the old stone house; slowly, for we were laying bright plans. I told her again of the small fortune I had brought back from the Orient, of the good position now promised me with an importing firm. We were planning our escape, for ever, from Creston's brooding horror. Slowly, too, because we were both heavy with unspoken forebodings. But at last the gray bulk of the old stone house loomed up before us in the dying twilight. Pale yellow lights winked malevolently at us from the narrow, squinting slits of windows. Valyne opened the heavy, iron-studded oaken door, and we entered. How often have I wished that we had slammed that accursed door, and fled into the haunted night! _2. "Fear Is Calling for You, Clay!"_ The stone house was old. It had been old when I was a child; but now it had changed. Now it seemed to me that nameless evil had sprung, since I had gone, from festering roots sunk deep into its grim antiquity. For the age of it then had been mellow, aloof, austere, even kindly; now it was a leering, gibbering horror. It was as if the house had died since my departure, and was now a restless specter, haunting its own hollow corpse.