The fan-like hiss of the hybrid bats that blundered aloft, their vicious unearthly squeaks, stabbing the dead stillness, added to her cryptic dread. Upon a sudden current of vagrant air a handful of fire-flies were driven through one of the sundered windows, whereupon they bobbed and swayed about evilly against the haunting gloom of the church like ghastly corpse candles. Together with the unblinking stare of the screech-owl from the moon-touched window casement, all these menacing influences combined and laid hold of Belle-Ann's will like overpowering hands of living agencies crowding her remorselessly to the verge of panic. She stood rigid, listening with a natant, sickening consciousness that something terrible hung at her back. Then, ashamed of her exposition of timid indecision and fear, she valiantly strove to disguise with action the sudden racking shudder that compassed and rippled over her being, like the chill of an icy current. Belle-Ann summoned all her failing faculties and levied upon her will to proceed with the ceremony of the sacred mission that had led them to this Godless place. But she only stood fixedly, rigid and helpless, growing paler with each succeeding moment, and gazed blankly at Bud and Lem alternately. Their nerves were as yielding as jelly strings. Other than the silky rustle aloft, punctuated occasionally with the thin needle-like anathemas of the bull-bats, there was now not the slightest sound within to disrupt the death-hush of this place. Nevertheless, Lem craned his neck, edging closer to the other two, and whispered portentously: "Ded yo'-all heer anything?" "No," returned Belle-Ann faintly and uncertainly. Buddy could only shake his head. Then sharply and, oddly enough, in unison, impelled by a sudden common instinct, the trio wheeled about, facing the wrecked benches. What they saw in that instant congealed the warm flow in their veins to currents of ice and drove their very breaths away. Three hearts smote their ribs a single whack; then seemingly, melted away and sank downward and out of their bodies, leaving a trio of lifeless, inanimate mummies, frozen into horrified, stony attitudes. An awful thing hung there on the edge of the grommet of light. A blurred, half-naked, grisly monster sprawled on its loathsome haunches before them,--a thing topped with a blood-mottled, hideous head, made frightful by two luridly igneous, horrible eyes. Eyes girded and shot with a bloody film bulged fixedly up at them, glaring through the flickering orange light. The eyes--the eyes!