to Peters door.  It was locked:  but immediately near the pavement was a window, the lower sash up, into which, with little trouble, I lifted myself and passed.  My foot, as I lowered it, stood on a body:  and this made me angry and restless.  I hissed a curse, and passed on, scraping the carpet with my soles, that I might hurt no one:  for I did not wish to hurt any one.  Even in the almost darkness of the room I recognised Peters’ furniture, as I expected:  for the house was his on a long lease, and I knew that his mother had had the intention to occupy it after his death.  But as I passed into the passage, all was mere blank darkness, and I, depending upon the lamp, had left the matches in the other house.  I groped my way to the stairs, and had my foot on the first step, when I was stopped by a vicious shaking of the front-door, which someone seemed to be at with hustlings and the most urgent poundings:  I stood with peering stern brows two or three minutes, for I knew that if I once yielded to the flinching at my heart, no mercy would be shown me in this house of tragedy, and thrilling shrieks would of themselves arise and ring through its haunted chambers.  The rattling continued an inordinate time, and so instant and imperative, that it seemed as if it could not fail to force the door.  But, though horrified, I whispered to my heart that it could only be the storm which was struggling at it like the grasp of a man, and after a time went on, feeling my way by the broad rail, in my brain somehow the thought of a dream which I had had in the Boreal of the woman Clodagh, how she let drop a fluid like pomegranate-seeds into water, and tendered it to Peter Peters:  and it was a mortal purging draught; but I would not stop, but step by step went up, though I suffered very much, my brows peering at the utter darkness, and my heart shocked at its own rashness.  I got to the first landing, and as I turned to ascend the second part of the stair, my left hand touched something icily cold:  I made some quick instinctive movement of terror, and, doing so, my foot struck against something, and I stumbled, half falling over what seemed a small table there.  Immediately a horrible row followed, for something fell to the ground:  and at that instant, ah, I heard something—­a voice—­a human voice, which uttered words close to my ear—­the voice of Clodagh, for I knew it:  yet not the voice of Clodagh in the flesh, but her voice clogged with clay and worms, and full of effort, and thick-tongued:  and in that ghastly speech of the grave I distinctly heard the words: 

‘Things being as they are in the matter of the death of Peter ...’

And there it stopped dead, leaving me so sick, my God, so sick, that I could hardly snatch my robes about me to fly, fly, fly, soft-footed, murmuring in pain, down the steps, down like a sneaking thief, but quick, snatching myself away, then wrestling with the cruel catch of the door which she would not let me open, feeling her all the time behind me, watching me.  And when I did get out, I was away up the length of the street, trailing my long jubbah, glancing backward, panting, for I thought that she might dare to follow, with her daring evil will.  And all that night I lay on a common bench in the wind-tossed and dismal Park.