The reminder that she had a new job to hold down made her pull a face as she glanced at her watch.

Already the first shadows were beginning to stir, as prelude to the short interlude between the lights. Very soon it would be dark.

A long walk stretched between her and the Summit. She could see it, in the distance, blocked with solid assurance, against the background of shrouded hills. But, dividing them, yawned a bowl of empty country, which dipped down for about a mile, into a tree-lined hollow, before it climbed up a corresponding slope, to the young plantation on its crest.

In spite of her stoicism, Helen’s heart sank. faintly at the prospect of re-passing through that choked dell. Since she had come to the Summit, she had been struck by the density of the surrounding undergrowth. When she looked out of the windows, at twilight, the evergreen shrubs on the lawnseemed actually to move and advance closer to the walls, as though they were pioneers in a creeping invasion.

Feeling secure as in a fortress, she enjoyed the contrast between the witched garden and the solid house, cheerful with lights and voices. She was inside and safe. But now, she was outside, and nearly two miles away.

“Idiot” she told herself, “it’s not late. It’s only dark. Scram.”

As she was denied the employer’s privilege of abuse, she got even by saying exactly what she liked to herself. She whipped up her courage by calling herself a choice collection of names, as she began to run cautiously, slipping on the slimy camber of the lane, since the rutted middle was too stony for safety.

She kept her eyes fixed on her goal, which seemed to be sinking gradually into the ground, as she dipped lower and lower. Just before she lost sight of it, a light gleamed out in the window of the blue room.

It seemed to her a signal, calling her back to a special duty. Every evening, at twilight, she had to go around the house, locking the doors and putting the shutters over the windows. Hitherto, she had derided the job as the limit of precaution; but, here, in the tenebrous solitude, it assumed an unpleasant significance.

There was a connection between it and a certain atmosphere of tension—excitement in the kitchen, whispers in the drawingroom—which emanated from a background of murder.

Murder. Helen shied instinctively at the word. Her mind was too healthy to regard crime other than fiction, which turned newspapers into the sensational kind of reading-matter, which is sold on Railway Station bookstalls. It was impossible to believe that these tragedies happened to real people.

She forced herself to think of a safer subject.

“Suppose I won the Irish Sweep.”

But, as the lane dropped deeper, its steep banks shutting out the light, she discovered that she had a mind above mere supposititious wealth. Simple pleasures appealed to her more at that moment—the safety of the kitchen at the Summit, with Mrs. Oates and the ginger cat for company, and dripping-toast for tea.

She made another start.

“Suppose I won the Irish Sweep. Someone’s got to win. Out of all the millions of people in the world, a few people are marked out to win fortunes. Staggering.”

Unfortunately, the thought introduced another equally stupendous.

“Yes. And out of all the millions of people who die in their beds, a few are marked out to be murdered.”

She switched off the current of her thoughts, for before her, crouched the black mouth of the hollow.

When she had crossed it, earlier in the afternoon, she had been chiefly concerned in picking out a fairly dry passage over the rich black mold formed by leaf-deposits. She had only marked it down as a sheltered spot in which to search for early primroses.

But the promise of spring was now only a mockery. As she advanced, the place seemed an area of desolation and decay, with wind-falls for crops. In this melancholy trough—choked with seasonal litter—sound was reduced to furtive rustles; light was shrunken to a dark miasma, through which trees loomed with the semblance of men.

Suddenly, murder ceased to be a special fiction of the Press. It became real—a menace and a monstrosity.

Helen could no longer control her thoughts, as she remembered what Mrs. Oates had told her about the crimes. There were four of them—credibly the work of some maniac, whose chosen victims were girls.

The first two murders were committed in the town, which was too far away from the Summit for the inmates to worry.