Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/386

376 a shock, as though something had moved in the room. All her nerves in a strange quiver, she listened for some sound or sign of what had awakened her. In the dead silence she felt she must scream, such a terror surrounded and held her.

"Who's there?" she tried to cry, but her voice came in a husky whisper. Her eyeballs rolled round in the darkness, not knowing where to rest; her hands moved, not knowing on which side to repel the attack she felt was coming.

The room was quite black; not even a glimpse of light came through the heavy curtains she had drawn across the windows. One moment she thought of springing from her bed and trying to reach the door; the next that such a flight would bring the invisible horror upon her. She thought to put forth her hand to seek for a match-box on the table beside the bed, but feared that something would grasp it if she did. She heard a board creak in the floor, as though some foot had pressed upon it. She drew the blankets over her head, and lay panting beneath them, half-stifled. A cold sweat broke out over her; she shivered like one caught naked in