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 reached forward to stop it, inadvertently causing the needle to slide across the disk with a sound that might have been the shriek of a dying man.

For a long while he stood holding the disk. Only when he became conscious of the startled beating of his heart did he throw off the spell.

He was staring at the record in his hands—the ghost. He dreaded the noise that would be made if he were to drop it on the floor,—even if he were to lay it down carefully and snap it with his heel.

He got up swiftly, unbolted the door, and walked out in the cold air to the end of the terrace, past the stone parapet, down the grassy slope to a point overhanging the shore of the lake. Far, far away, through the blackness, were tiny points of light, marking the location of the Browns' cottage. His eyes sought a gleam farther along the shore, but there was nothing in all that blackness to indicate Miriam's old cabin.

They were there, perhaps asleep, perhaps wearily wakeful, with only their souls left to fight for them against some vague, sinister enemy. Perhaps she was watching over him as he slept; preparing his draughts; stirring the fire with a little shiver. Perhaps she, too, had been approached by spectres. Perhaps she was ill, despairing, afraid. Tears came into his eyes.

He could feel the disk pressing against his fingers, and the tiny hard rills through which the needle had traced its uncanny message.