Sarah Kyle met us in the hall, standing motionless under vast, grimy roof-beams two centuries old. Seven years had changed her. Her teeth were gone. Her face was narrowed, sharpened, shriveled. Her eyes were sunken, curiously bright. She was stooped, until her posture suggested some queer, bright-eyed bird. She took my hand in her horny claw, and welcomed me with a cackling laugh. Then she began to make apologies for the poverty of her house, and to hint transparently for news of my business in the Orient. "May I see the doctor?" I said. Her bird-like eyes fixed me, with their uncanny glitter. "You had better see him, Clay, if you have come to marry Valyne," her cracked voice shrilled. "And ye had better take his warning. Don't walk too near the edge of hell!" I stepped back, startled, demanding: "Mother Kyle! What do you mean?" "Latham will tell you," she said, "if your own strange blood hasn't written it on your soul!" "Where's the doctor?" Her white head jerked sharply. "Latham's still at work," she told me, "in his study in the attic. He's busy on his great book." "His book?" I said, wondering. "He is writing a history of the demonolatries of Creston." "I want to talk to him right away." "You can see him after supper." Her thin nose jerked at me emphatically, like the beak of a bird. "He'll give you reason enough why you can't marry Valyne, and drag her soul to hell!" Valyne rescued me from her cackling strangeness, and led me up to my old room. There I met the two servants of the house. They, Eben Hand and his wife Josepha, were setting up my bedstead. Eben Hand was a fat, panting man. There was no color in his blond hair, his vague pale eyes, or his pasty skin. Mute, he expressed himself very swiftly to his wife with white, pliable fat hands. She was a big, dark woman. Her eyes were wide and sharp and black. Her raven hair was coiled into glistening, oily ropes. Her upper lip bore a thick, dark fuzz. She was doing the most of the work, issuing commands to her silent husband in a coarse, mannish voice. She bowed to me, oddly, as I entered with Valyne and set down my light bag. Her dark avid eyes remained fastened on my face, while she told her husband: "Eben, this is Clay. Ye remember little Claiborne Coe, Eben, that used to run through the village. Well, this is him, come back to take our Valyne away. Clay got rich, Eben, in them furrin parts!" At that last sentence, Eben Hand's small, pale eyes shifted suddenly from his wife to me. They searched my person, and seized upon my modest gold ring. His white fingers made some swift, covert reply. When they had gone, I said to Valyne: "I don't like them--or this house! Can't we stay somewhere else, tonight?" "There's no hotel in Creston," she told me. "And it would look strange if we went away tonight. Besides, you must stay to talk with Doctor Kyle. I promised him." But even the electric warmth of her kiss couldn't thaw out the chill of my forebodings.