The

appearance and disappearance were accomplished with amazing rapidity

always.

It was a head and shoulders that looked in, and the movement

combined the speed, the lightness and the silence of a shadow. Only it

was not a shadow. A hand held the edge of the door. The face shot

round, saw him, and withdrew like lightning. It was utterly beyond him

to imagine anything more quick and clever. It darted. He heard no

sound. It went. But—it had seen him, looked him all over, examined

him, noted what he was doing with that lightning glance. It wanted to

know if he were awake still, or asleep. And though it went off, it

still watched him from a distance; it waited somewhere; it knew all

about him. Where it waited no one could ever guess. It came probably,

he felt, from beyond the house, possibly from the roof, but most likely

from the garden or the sky. Yet, though strange, it was not terrible.

It was a kindly and protective figure, he felt. And when it happened

he never called for help, because the occurrence simply took his voice

away.

“It comes from the Nightmare Passage,” he decided; “but it’s not a

nightmare.” It puzzled him.

Sometimes, moreover, it came more than once in a single night. He

was pretty sure—not quite positive— that it occupied his room as

soon as he was properly asleep. It took possession, sitting perhaps

before the dying fire, standing upright behind the heavy curtains, or

even lying down in the empty bed his brother used when he was home

from school. Perhaps it played the curtain game, perhaps it poked the

coals; it knew, at any rate, where the eleventh dog had lain

concealed. It certainly came in and out; certainly, too, it did not

wish to be seen. For, more than once, on waking suddenly in the

midnight blackness, Tim knew it was standing close beside his bed and

bending over him. He felt, rather than heard, its presence. It glided

quietly away. It moved with marvellous softness, yet he was positive

it moved. He felt the difference, so to speak. It had been near him,

now it was gone. It came back, too— just as he was falling into sleep

again.