"I tried that, too," he confessed. "But, do you know? this has been the most infernally unpleasant evening I ever spent in my life. The wind has been making the most uncanny noises—I would swear there were people moving all over the house if I did not know I was the only person in it. I have been all over the place a dozen times, but could find nothing. At last I couldn't stand it; so I unchained and brought in the dogs. Somehow they didn't seem to have much use for the place—I had to drag them in by their collars."
"They knew they had no right to be here," I commented. "The matter with you is, you've been smoking too much, and got your nerves on edge. Come and help me put up the dogs before my wife sees them, or you'll 'get what for,' as your English expression is."
This office performed, we returned to the dining-room, where I suggested a "Scotch-and-soda" before retiring for the night, and together at the sideboard we prepared each a modest potion. As we touched glasses to a good sleep and happy awakening, there sounded from the air behind us that weird and terrible cry! My friend's face turned ashen on the instant and his glass fell from his hand and lay shattered on the hardwood floor.
"My God!" he cried; "did you hear that?"
I was startled, of course, but the morning's experience, reinforced by anticipation of some such happening, had steeled my nerves.
"Did I hear what?" I asked. "Look here, old man, you are certainly in a queer way to-night. What should I hear?—everything is as quiet as death."
"Do you mean to tell me," he demanded, looking at me incredulously and with alarm still in his face, "that you did not hear that awful groan?"—but meanwhile I had filled another tumbler for him, which he hastily emptied, although the glass rattled against his teeth as he drank.
"Come, come!" I said; "go to bed, and you will be all right in the morning;"—but the words had but left my lips when, right between us as it seemed, there swelled again upon the air that utterance of anguish, followed by the dying cadence of a sigh.
"There!—there!—there!" stammered my companion:—"did you hear it then?"
"Yes, I did," I replied; "and the first time as well. Is that what has disturbed you to-night?"