A rustling as of black wings gathered about him, unseen shapes hovered closer and closer--was it his fancy or did he hear them?
He tried to disbelieve, he strove to withstand his terror; and a moment his fortitude held.

Then, as the Syndic, shaking as with the palsy, tottered, with a hand on either wall down the stairs, and moaning aloud in his terror, felt his way across the room below, Claude's courage, too, gave way; not in face of that he saw, but of that which he fancied.
He turned too, and with a greater show of composure, and still carrying the light, he stumbled down the stairs and into the room below.
There, for an instant sense and nerve returned, and he stood.

He turned even, and made as if he would re-ascend the staircase.

But he had no sooner thrust his head into it, and paused an instant to listen ere he ventured, than a faint echo of the same mirthless laughter reached him, and he turned shuddering, and fled--fled out of the room, out of the house, out of the light, to the same spot under the trees whence he had started with so bold a heart a few minutes earlier.
The Syndic was there before him--or no, not the Syndic, but a stricken man, clinging to a tree; seized now and again with a fresh fit of trembling.

"Take me home," he babbled.