A smothered exclamation fell from Lem's lips. He pointed through the buff halo cast from the lantern. There against the south wall of the room some of the benches could be dimly discerned overturned,--others twisted and broken and scattered in a mass of wreckage--while one balanced perilously on the casement as though a hand had sought to take it out through the window. "Who yo' 'low done thet?" inquired Buddy in a tremulous whisper, clinging timorously to Belle-Ann's skirts. "I don't 'low any human bein' done hit," predicted Lem in faint undertones that faltered with a creeping, choking apprehension. A queer brain-numbing apathy settled upon them that seemed to deprive them suddenly of the use of their tongues and limbs. "Oh, nonsense!" discredited Belle-Ann bravely. "Some mean boys perhaps." Disbelieving, the brothers stood rigid and shook their now pale faces in denial. Belle-Ann did not fear ghosts, but there was undeniably some strange mortal influence circulating the eery atmosphere of this place like the proximity of some menacing presence close at hand, but unseen. She fought hard to repel this unknown fear that was stealing upon her, but, despite her valiant struggle, it was fast seizing upon her nerves and permeating her whole being with singular insistency. With an effort she gathered herself together. "Now hurry on, boys," she directed briskly in a voice that sounded unnaturally furtive and low. "Buddy, you get in here between Lem and I--there--that's it. Now, boys, we are going to say a little prayer for pap and maw, and you, Lem, remember." At a slight sound the three impulsively and unconsciously took hold of each other and turned blanched faces toward the window opposite the altar. At the same instant, a screech-owl closed his wings on the window casement and sat immobile, like a creature without life, while a slender, livid finger of moonlight crossed its speckled back and, continuing on, pointed specifically to the bloody cross athwart the altar. Little Bud faltered weakly and shook like a boy with the ague. His lips worked mutely and tried to whisper something, but his tongue cleft, paralyzed with a prickly dread that stole over him, and his teeth began a forbidding tattoo. He cast an appealing look at Lem; wherefore the mere sight of Lem's white face accentuated his own fleeting courage. The grim lethargy of this subtle, contagious dread had communicated its blight to Lem's senses with equal virulence. A pall of lethal fear deprived Belle-Ann of words and action. What with the awful thick dark, made pitchy beyond the buff circle of the flickering lantern; a fetid, curdy, musty, stifling blackness which, she now felt instinctively, held screened just there, some hidden horror reaching out to wrap its smothering terror about her.