Max obeyed. He kept so close that the girl's soft hair, which was of the ash-fair color so common in English blondes who have been flaxen-headed in their childhood, almost touched his face. She opened the door and entered what was evidently the back room of the deserted shop. A dark room it must have been, even in broadest daylight. Opposite to the door by which they had entered was one which was glazed in the upper half; this evidently led into the shop itself, although the old red curtain which hung over the glass panes hid the view of what was beyond. There was a little fireplace, in which were the burnt-out ashes of a recent fire. There was a deal table in the middle of the room, and a cloth of a common pattern of blue and red check lay in a heap on the floor. A couple of plain Windsor chairs, and a third with arms and a cushion, a hearth-rug, a fender and fire-irons, completed the furniture of the room. And the one window, a small one, which looked out upon the wharf, in a corner formed by the outhouse on the one side and a shed on the other, was carefully boarded up. Grimly desolate the dark, bare room looked, small as it was; and a couple of rats, which scurried over the floor as Max entered, added a suggestion of other horrors to the deserted room. The girl had managed to get behind Max, and he turned sharply with a suspicion that she meant to shut him into the room by himself. "It's all right--it's all right," whispered she, reassuringly. "He isn't in here. But he's there." And she pointed to the door with the red curtain. Max stopped. The farther he advanced into this mysterious house the less he liked the prospect presented to his view. And the girl herself seemed to have forgotten her pretext of wanting something fetched out of that mysterious third room. She remained leaning against the wall, close by the door by which she and Max had entered, still holding the candlestick and staring at the red curtain with eyes full of terror. Max found his own eyes fascinated by the steady gaze, and he looked in the same direction. Staring intently at the bit of faded stuff, he was almost ready to imagine, in the silence and gloom of the place, that he saw it move. His breath came fast. Overcome by the uncanny influences of the dreary place itself, of the hideous story he had heard, of the girl's white face, Max began to feel as if the close, cold air of the unused room was like the touch of clammy fingers on his face. Even as this consciousness seized upon him, he heard a moan, a sliding sound, a thud, and the light went suddenly out. In the first impulse of horror at his position Max uttered a sharp exclamation, but remained immovable. Indeed, in the darkness, in this unknown place, to take a step in any direction was impossible. He stood listening, waiting for some sound, some ray of light, to guide him.