But another sound came instead and made the pair of us start and stare.

It was the soft shutting of some upstairs door.
"I thought we had the house to ourselves ?" cried I, my miserable nerves on edge in an instant.
"So did I," he answered, very pale.

"My servants must have come back.

By the Lord Harry, they shall hear of this!" He sprang to a door, I heard his feet clattering up some stone stairs, and in a trice he was running along the gallery overhead; in another I heard him railing behind some upper door that he had flung open and banged behind him; then his voice dropped, and finally died away.

I was left some minutes in the oppressively silent hall, shaken, startled, ashamed of my garrulity, aching to get away.