A sudden turn in the path which he was following, however,
revealed one of the councilor's windows aglow with light, and as he
pressed quietly around the end of the building the sound of a low voice
came to him through the open door. Cautiously he approached and peered
in. A large oil lamp, the light of which he had seen in the window, was
burning on a table in the big room but the voice came from the little
closet into which Obadiah had taken him the preceding night. For several
minutes he crouched and listened. He heard the chuckling laugh of the
old councilor--and then an incoherent raving that set his blood
tingling. There is a horror in the sound of madness, a horror that
creeps to the very pit of one's soul, that sends shivering dread from
every nerve center, that causes one who is alone with it to sweat with a
nameless fear. It was the voice of madness that came from that little
room. Before it Nathaniel quailed as if a clammy hand had reached out
from the darkness and gripped him by the throat. He drew back shivering
in every limb, and the voice followed him, shrieking now in a sudden
burst of insane mirth and dying away a moment later in a hollow cackling
laugh that seemed to curdle the blood in his veins. Mad! Obadiah Price
was mad! Step by step Nathaniel fell back from the door. He felt himself
trembling from head to foot. His heart thumped within his breast like
the beating of a hammer. For an instant there was silence--a silence in
which strange dread held him breathless while he watched the glow in the
door and listened.
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