The Daily Alaska empire., 1932-10-01
CHAPTER 18. HORROR VISITS NAN

Nan sat up in bed in the dark. Something had awakened her, but she didn't know what it was.
 At first the darkness seemed to fill the room, pressing in upon her so that the posts of the bed, the red hangings, which she had pushed back as far as possible, and the big wardrobe, which was somewhere on the opposite side of the room, were all lost in an even velvet dark. Then the curtain at the far window moved dn some unseen current of air, and a pale luminous streak divided the dark ness. The immediate effect was to make the room seem immense ly large.
 A moment before everything had been pressing in upon her; she could have touched the walls with her outstretched hand. And now, with a puff of wind, everything was immediately far away. The suddenness of it made her feel dizzy. She watched the streak of light and tried to steady herself. It came and went, and came and went again.
 Nan sat bolt upright, one hand on the bed and the other at her throat. Sc had walked like that, and she had not moved yet. Then, as the curtain was first sucked in against the window and then on a veering gust thrown back into the room, her hand dropped and she took a long breath. It was bright moonlight outside. The blown curtain let the moonlight in, and filled the room with an uncertain dusk. She could see the bedposts against it, and the ward robe like a black cave. Then ev- erything was dark again as the curtain fell back into place.
 She drew another long breath. It must have been the wind that had walked her. She pushed back her hair and relaxed It was ra- ther horrid to find yourself sit- ting up in the dark and not know how you had got there. For a moment she had not known where she was-in what bed, in what r00n1 in Mhqt nlqpo
 She piled up a pillow behind her back and watched the moon light run across the floor like a wave flung up by the tide. Like wave it ran back again. She could see all the furniture now, mysteriously soft and large. A pleasant drowsiness began to steal over her. She thought back in the evening before. Jervis had taken her over the house. She had made great friends with Bran. She wished people were as easy to make friends with as dogs.
 A drowsy warmth flowed over her; she slipped little further down in the bed. She was slip ping down into soft flowing wa ters of sleep, when all of a sud- den they ebbed away and she was awake again, her heart beating and her eyes starring into the darkness.
 It wasn't the Tapping of the curtain that had walked her be- fore, and it wasn't the Tapping of the curtain that had walked her now It was a sound-not in the room-somewhere else. Now that she heard it, she could remember that she had heard it before. The memory was like an echo just caught on the edge of sound. She did not yet know what it was that she had heard, And then, as she listened, it came again-a faint whining noise, followed by what sounded like a footstep. It was so faint that it puzzled her, to guess why it should have reused her from her sleep.
 She threw back the bedclothes and sat on the edge of the bed, listening all the while. The sound came again-a long faint whine, and a distant padding step. The two things together said Bran; but instead of reassurement a wave I of fear rushed in. Bran-down- stairs in the hall-padding up and down, and whining. It fright ened her beyond her own power