And, as I thought of
this old soldier moving through the long series of alarms, worn with
watching and wearied with assault, unenlightened yet undismayed, even
down to the dreadful shock of his sister’s terror, and still showing
the dogged pluck that persists in the face of defeat, I understood what
Dr. Silence meant when he described him as a man “to be counted on.”

I think there was nothing beyond this rigidity of his stern features,
and a certain greyness of the complexion, to betray the turmoil of the
emotions that was doubtless going on within; and the quality of these
two men, each in his own way, so keyed me up that, by the time the door
was shut and we had exchanged silent greetings, all the latent courage
I possessed was well to the fore, and I felt as sure of myself as I
knew I ever could feel. Colonel Wragge set the bowl carefully in the centre of the table. “Midnight,” he said shortly, glancing at his watch, and we all three
moved to our chairs. There, in the middle of that cold and silent place, we sat, with
the vile bowl before us, and a thin, hardly perceptible steam
rising through the damp air from the surface of the white cloth and
disappearing upwards the moment it passed beyond the zone of red light
and entered the deep shadows thrown forward by the projecting wall of
chimney. The doctor had indicated our respective places, and I found myself
seated with my back to the door and opposite the black hearth. The
Colonel was on my left, and Dr. Silence on my right, both half facing
me, the latter more in shadow than the former. We thus divided the
little table into even sections, and sitting back in our chairs we
awaited events in silence. For something like an hour I do not think there was even the faintest
sound within those four walls and under the canopy of that vaulted
roof. Our slippers made no scratching on the gritty floor, and our
breathing was suppressed almost to nothing; even the rustle of our
clothes as we shifted from time to time upon our seats was inaudible. Silence smothered us absolutely--the silence of night, of listening,
the silence of a haunted expectancy. The very gurgling of the lamps was
too soft to be heard, and if light itself had sound, I do not think we
should have noticed the silvery tread of the moonlight as it entered
the high narrow windows and threw upon the floor the slender traces of
its pallid footsteps. Colonel Wragge and the doctor, and myself too for that matter, sat thus
like figures of stone, without speech and without gesture. My eyes
passed in ceaseless journeys from the bowl to their faces, and from
their faces to the bowl. They might have been masks, however, for all
the signs of life they gave; and the light steaming from the horrid
contents beneath the white cloth had long ceased to be visible. Then presently, as the moon rose higher, the wind rose with it. It
sighed, like the lightest of passing wings, over the roof; it crept
most softly round the walls; it made the brick floor like ice beneath
our feet. With it I saw mentally the desolate moorland flowing like
a sea about the old house, the treeless expanse of lonely hills, the
nearer copses, sombre, and mysterious in the night. _The_ plantation,
too, in particular I saw, and imagined I heard the mournful whisperings
that must now be a-stirring among its tree-tops as the breeze played
down between the twisted stems. In the depth of the room behind us the
shafts of moonlight met and crossed in a growing network. It was after an hour of this wearing and unbroken attention, and I
should judge about one o’clock in the morning, when the baying of
the dogs in the stable-yard first began, and I saw John Silence move
suddenly in his chair and sit up in an attitude of attention. Every
force in my being instantly leaped into the keenest vigilance. Colonel
Wragge moved too, though slowly, and without raising his eyes from the
table before him. The doctor stretched his arm out and took the white cloth from the bowl. It was perhaps imagination that persuaded me the red glare of the lamps
grew fainter and the air over the table before us thickened. I had been
expecting something for so long that the movement of my companions,
and the lifting of the cloth, may easily have caused the momentary
delusion that something hovered in the air before my face, touching
the skin of my cheeks with a silken run. But it was certainly not a
delusion that the Colonel looked up at the same moment and glanced over
his shoulder, as though his eyes followed the movements of something
to and fro about the room, and that he then buttoned his overcoat more
tightly about him and his eyes sought my own face first, and then the
doctor’s. And it was no delusion that his face seemed somehow to have
turned dark, become spread as it were with a shadowy blackness. I saw
his lips tighten and his expression grow hard and stern, and it came to
me then with a rush that, of course, this man had told us but a part of
the experiences he had been through in the house, and that there was
much more he had never been able to bring himself to reveal at all. I felt sure of it. The way he turned and stared about him betrayed a
familiarity with other things than those he had described to us. It was
not merely a sight of fire he looked for; it was a sight of something
alive, intelligent, something able to evade his searching; it was _a
person_. It was the watch for the ancient Being who sought to obsess
him. And the way in which Dr. Silence answered his look--though it was only
by a glance of subtlest sympathy--confirmed my impression. “We may be ready now,” I heard him say in a whisper, and I understood
that his words were intended as a steadying warning, and braced myself
mentally to the utmost of my power. Yet long before Colonel Wragge had turned to stare about the room, and
long before the doctor had confirmed my impression that things were at
last beginning to stir, I had become aware in most singular fashion
that the place held more than our three selves. With the rising of the
wind this increase to our numbers had first taken place. The baying of
the hounds almost seemed to have signalled it. I cannot say how it may
be possible to realise that an empty place has suddenly become--not
empty, when the new arrival is nothing that appeals to any one of the
senses; for this recognition of an “invisible,” as of the change in the
balance of personal forces in a human group, is indefinable and beyond
proof. Yet it is unmistakable. And I knew perfectly well at what given
moment the atmosphere within these four walls became charged with the
presence of other living beings besides ourselves. And, on reflection,
I am convinced that both my companions knew it too.