George Darcy’s face was before him. It was not in impenetrable shadow, as the other objects in the yard were, but had a cheerful light about it. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Darcy as his father often used to look: with ghostly spectacles turned up upon its ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That, and its livid color, made it horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather than a part of its own expression.

As Darcy looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again. He blinked and then traced the lion’s head with fingers, feeling only cold iron beneath them. To say that he was not startled or that his blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy would be untrue. Shaking his head, he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished, turned it sturdily, walked in, and lighted the candle that was waiting for him.

He did pause, with a moment’s irresolution, before he shut the door. He did look cautiously behind it first, as if he half expected to be terrified with the sight of Old Mr. Darcy’s backside sticking out into the hall. But there was nothing on the back of the door, except the screws and nuts that held the knocker on, so he closed it with a bang.

The sound resounded through the house like thunder. Every room above and every cask in the cellars below appeared to have a separate peal of echoes all its own. Darcy was not a man to be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door and walked across the hall and up the stairs, slowly too, for his candle cast eerie shadows as he went.