She was not in the house--she had gone to the mill.

Ah! What was that they had said?
An infamous thought passed through the scoundrel's mind.

Then, in what he half believed was an access of virtuous fury, he began by the dim light to rummage in the drawers of the desk for such loose coin or valuables as, in the perfect security of the ranch, were often left unguarded.

Suddenly he heard a heavy footstep on the threshold, and turned.
An awful vision--a recollection, so unexpected, so ghostlike in that weird light that he thought he was losing his senses--stood before him.
It moved forwards with staring eyeballs and white and open lips from which a horrible inarticulate sound issued that was the speech of no living man! With a single desperate, almost superhuman effort Stephen Forsyth bounded aside, leaped from the window, and ran like a madman from the house.

Then the apparition trembled, collapsed, and sank in an undistinguishable heap to the ground.
When Josephine Forsyth returned an hour later with her mill foreman, she was startled to find her helpless patient in a fit on the floor of her room.