The next instant Donal was feeling his way up--cautiously, as if on each succeeding step he might come against the man who had groaned.

Tales of haunted houses rushed into his memory.
What if he were but pursuing the groan of an actor in the past--a creature the slave of his own conscious memory--a mere haunter of the present which he could not influence--one without physical relation to the embodied, save in the groans he could yet utter! But it was more in awe than in fear that he went.

Up and up he felt his way, all about him as still as darkness and the night could make it.

A ghostly cold crept through his skin; it was drawn together as by a gently freezing process; and there was a pulling at the muscles of his chest, as if his mouth were being dragged open by a martingale.
As he felt his way along the wall, sweeping its great endless circle round and round in spiral ascent, all at once his hand seemed to go through it; he started and stopped.

It was the door of the room into which he had been shown to meet the earl! It stood wide open.