Page:The Indian Drum (1917 original).pdf/101

Rh Sherrill, but some had fallen since; the footsteps made in the early afternoon had been obliterated by it, but Alan could see those he had made that evening, and the marks where some one else had gone into the house and not come out again. In part it was plain, therefore, what had happened: the man had come from the south, for he had not seen the light Alan had had in the north and rear part of the house; believing no one was in the house, the man had gone in through the front door with a key. He had been some one familiar with the house; for he had known about the side door and how to reach it and that he could get out that way. This might mean no more than that he was the same who had searched through the house before; but at least it made his identity with the former intruder more certain.

Alan let himself in at the front door and turned on the light in the reading lamp in the library. The electric torch still was burning on the floor and he picked it up and extinguished it; he went up-stairs and brought down his shoes. He had seen a wood flrefire [sic] set ready for lighting in the library, and now he lighted it and sat before it drying his wet socks before he put on his shoes. He was still shaking and breathing fast from his struggle with the man and his chase after him, and by the strangeness of what had taken place.

When the shaft of light from the torch had flashed across Alan's face in the dark library, the man had not taken him for what he was—a living person; he had taken him for a specter. His terror and the things he had cried out could mean only that. The specter of whom? Not of Benjamin Corvet; for one of the things Alan had remarked when he saw Benjamin Corvet's picture was that he himself did not look at all like his