“The Lake of Wine!” The term had been surely employed to cover or suggest a tangible fact. Its persistent repetition by Mr. Joe Corby precluded the idea that it was merely an accidental fancy played upon for the girl’s behoof.
Then, what was its interpretation?—to what did it allude? Beyond the surmise that it must refer to something concealed upon, or connected with, his bugbear property, it was obviously impracticable for him to reach.
So, rebounding from a blank wall of speculation, he would stumble against his second trouble. This, in its essence, was nothing but a fear, or the shadow of one. It amounted to sounds about the house of a night—sounds indistinctly acknowledged by a consciousness on the borderland of slumber and acute to nice impressions of the senses. He could recall them thundering on the drum of his visionary ear, and could remember starting up wildly awake to be aware of nothing in all the atmosphere of his room but a ticking silence. Still, the feeling would remain that something had been moving, creeping, breathing in his neighbourhood only a moment earlier; and more than once he had risen, with a wet forehead, to satisfy himself that he had been merely dreaming.
This recurrent uneasiness he had experienced on every night but the first of his inhabitance of the room; and it was beginning to thread his being with a little strand of nervousness. Oddly he felt himself in some telepathic way to be the centre of a nebulous mystery without having the remotest idea as to what was its nature. But his present lot was so strange, his position so isolated, that, even as a fearless man, he felt he was justified in adopting some nice precautions against the possibility of midnight surprises.
Now it occurred to him that upon that single night only of his arrival had he enjoyed immunity from this shadowy sense of unseen company in his room; and he could not fail to remember that upon that occasion alone had the shutters of the broad window been closed and fastened. Ever since, by his own order, had they remained open. Moreover, as was his custom, he slept with a lattice flung wide to the inpour of fresh cold air.
Certainly to assume that any midnight visitor could have taken advantage of this so far as to enter, by way of ladder or creeper, and prowl about his chamber without immediately awakening him, seemed a ridiculous supposition. Yet, as a wise man, it would perhaps be as well for the future to obviate, by closing the shutters, the necessity of suffering an apprehension so far-fetched.
“Whimple,” said he, as the man brought the bucket wearily back to the well-side—“why, when I first came, did you so protest against my flinging open the shutters of my bedroom?”
The servant hesitated, then stammered:
“I—I thought it wisest, sir. The—the house is lonely, and the neighbourhood harbours some rogues, I fear.”
“Such as him you are on speaking terms with? Well, I have altered my mind. For the future, close them—you understand?”