extending from the extreme end of the deserted
part of the house, and covering a space of
perhaps about half an acre. The wall was very
high, much higher than an ordinary garden wall,
and the door of it, which led into a dark shrubbery-
walk, now almost blocked up with tangled
undergrowth, was kept constantly locked, and,
indeed, had no appearance of having been opened
for any number of years. Why this was so I
was never able to learn. I had asked the question
of my nurse, a resident in the house since
before my birth, but she had replied evasively
that she supposed the key was lost, and at any
rate there were gardens enough and to spare
without using that one, adding an injunction to
me not to go near there, as the shrubbery was
damp and full of briars and nettles, and I should
hurt myself and get my clothes torn. The result
of her caution was, that the next day found me
making my way through the tangled underwood
in the direction of the closed door that so
excited my curiosity. For some time the noise
I made forcing a passage kept from me the
knowledge that I was not alone in my progress.
But pausing to take breath, I suddenly became
aware of the fact, and, turning round, I found
myself face to face with my father. In a voice
of severity, very unusual when addressed to me,
he asked me what I was doing there, adding a
prohibition ever to return, as I should be sure
to hurt myself, and he would not have it.

From that moment I became convinced that
within the enclosure of those walls lay the secret
of the mystery of our existence and of my father's
strange watchfulness of me, and I resolved, come
what might, to strive to solve it.

But two days later was commenced the erection
of a high, strong paling round the shrubbery,
and not being tall or strong enough to
scale it, independent of the risk of being
detected in the attempt to do so, I was baffled.

I was, I suppose, at this time, about seven or
eight years old, but no notice ever being taken of
my birthday, I did not then know what my age
was, and now I can only guess approximately
what it might have been.

One thing I gained by this inkling of a
discovery, and that was the dispersion of my terrors
on the Bisclavaret grounds.

No; I felt assured that not in myself, alone
and individually, lay the cause of my father's
conduct towards me. There, behind that
shrubbery, within those walls, was hidden the true
explanation, and I only was an object of anxiety
as being somehow connected with that impenetrable
mystery.

That such was the fact, and how it was so, I
had to learn later.

Months passed away, perhaps a year may
have gone by, when one night I went to bed
about my usual hour, half-past eight or nine
o'clock.

It had been a hot summer's day, and a long
ride had fatigued me, so that I slept unusually
sound (I was, for a child, rather a light sleeper
in general), when—I can describe the sensation
in no other way than as that of being wrenched
instantaneously from profound sleep into terrified
waking—I was roused by a scream, so loud,
so long, so agonised, that I sprang up shivering
with a ghastly horror that made the cold sweat
burst out over my quivering limbs.

lu an instant, my father—I slept in a little
room opening from his—rushed in, with a face I
shall never forget, a look whose anxious terror
was all directed to me—as if excited far less by
that hideous sound, than by the fear of its
influence on me.

Bursting into hysterical sobs, I stretched my
arms to him, and almost for the first time I
could remember, he took me to his breast,
clasping me close, kissing, soothing, and
reassuring me like a woman; yet, I had a consciousness,
at the same time, dividing his attention to
me with a restless intense anxiety as to the
circumstance that had caused it, mingled with a
dread of a recurrence of the alarm, an
impatient desire to investigate the matter, of
which, however, he attempted no explanation,
being, I suppose, too shaken by his emotions to
invent a plausible one.

While he still held me thus, my nurse entered.
This seemed to relieve him. I observed that
they exchanged looks of mutual intelligence,
and my father, placing me in her arms, once
more kissed me, telling me to fear nothing, and
taking a light, he left my room by the opposite
door from that by which he had entered it.

"What was it, nurse?" I whispered, when I
had become a little reassured. She hesitated.

"It must have been Jane, frightened by a rat;
or perhaps she had the nightmare. But it was
nothing that could hurt you, dear."

I knew this was not the true explanation; but
I also knew I was not likely to get another; so I
was silent, and, I suppose, she thought, satisfied.

More than once, after that night, did the same
harrowing sound disturb me, and sometimes the
shrieks were not single, but iterated with fearful
energy. On each occasion my father manifested
the same intense disturbance and anxiety, though
he endeavoured to conceal it from me, and
invented some plausible explanation, which I was
forced to appear to accept, though my life was
rendered miserable by the terrors with which
this state of things beset it.

One morning, after the shrieks had been more
than usually terrific, my father, apparently driven
into a desperate resolution, announced to me
that we were going away for a time; that he
would accompany me to our destination, and,
leaving me with my nurse, he would come often
to see me.

I had never been from home before, and the
idea of the change—yet less for its own sake
than for the escape it promised me from my
terror-haunted life—afforded me unspeakable
relief. Whether the evidence of this awakened
in my father more pain or pleasure, I can hardly
tell; certainly, the feelings were mingled.

In a week, it was fixed, we should go into
Devonshire, where, in a village known to my
nurse, we were to take up our abode, but for
no specified time.