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It see towards her that set her a-tre out sharp and near, she positively relapsed into a kind of sitting position on the floor, helpless and paralyzed by a furious up-rush of terror

For it appeared, so far as Mrs Nugent could afterwards make it out, as if a sort of double process went on It was notwheels, outside and therefore harmless; but that the room itself in which she crouched, itself filled with so lock, that held her there motionless, blind and dumb with horror, unable to move, even to lift her hands or turn her head As one approached, the other rose

Again sounded the hoofs and wheels, near now and iain they hushed as the corner was approached Then once more, as they broke out, clear and distinct, not twenty yards away at the turning into the village, Mrs Nugent, no longer able even to keep that rigid position of fear, sank gently backwards and relapsed in a huddle on the floor

II

Mr Nugent was astonished and even a little peevish when, on arriving home after dark, he found the parlor lamp a-smoke and his wife absent

He inquired for her; the o He shouted at the bottom of the stairs, but there was no response And after he had taken his boots off, and his desire for supper had beconant, he himself stepped upstairs to see into the matter

It was several minutes, even after the conveyal of an apparently inanins of intelligence; and even these were littleeyes and exclamations It was another quarter of an hour before any kind of connected story could be got out of her One conclusion only was evident, that Mrs Nugent did not propose to fetch the forgotten candle still burning on the cloth-covered, brass-nailed table, but that it must be fetched instantly; the door locked on the outside, and the key laid before her on that tablecloth These were the terone into

Plainly there was but one person to carry out these instructions, for the little servant-nant sentences that had fallen froent himself, cloth cap and all, stepped upstairs once more