Giles put his head on one side, like a wise old bird, and peered up at Barnabas through the gathering gloom.
"I wouldn't say that if I was you," he remarked. "Don't you be righteous overmuch; it ain't safe."
But the preacher went back to his post with fresh zeal.
Timothy was sitting upright, staring and pointing wildly at a corner of the room; he shrieked to Barnabas to come and stand between him and "it".
It was curious how, in his extremity, with the terror of death before him, he clung to Barnabas, whom he had always feared and hated, as the only person capable of exorcising the horrors that surrounded him. Barnabas lighted a candle and examined the corner.
"There's naught there!" he said.
"It's shifted; it wur afeart o' ye; it's behind me now!" cried Timothy. "It's makin' signs; it's pointin' to its head, and I didn't go to kill him. I only meant—it's comin' nearer—doan't, doan't! Ah!—--"
There was another agonised shriek. Timothy tried to spring out of bed, the drops of sweat standing on his forehead.
Barnabas put his hands on the madman's shoulders and forced him back. This sort of thing had been going on at intervals for the last three hours, and the preacher began to feel as if he were the unwilling spectator of the tortures of the damned. Indeed, he believed, almost as firmly as the miserable Timothy, that there was a devil in the room.
"It's no good doing that, man," he said at last, when Timothy made another frantic attempt to hide. "If it's a spirit ye are scared of, ye can't escape it so. If ye ha' done it a wrong, confess afore it's too late; and the Lord will, mayhap, ha' mercy on ye an' lay it."