Yet it occurred to me it might answer, might serve to frighten the fellow.

I slipped back, grasped it, and returned, but--when I looked out again he was gone." She took a deep breath, and I heard Miles clinch and unclinch his hands.
"Maybe it was just a ghost, Miss, or a shadow," he interrupted hoarsely, "for I swear to God there wasn't none of our men up there--you know that, Lieutenant." "We called the roll in the front hall not ten minutes before, anyhow," I replied, still looking at Billie, "and I hardly see how any of them got away after that." "I--I almost believed the same thing," she confessed, speaking swiftly.
"As I said, it did not seem exactly real from the first, yet I had to trust my own eyes, and I saw him almost as plainly as I see you two now.
Then he was gone; gone so quickly I could not conceive the possibility of it.

The whole affair appeared imaginary, a matter of nerves.

It was an hallucination; out of my own brain, it seemed, I had conjured up that crouching figure.

I had overheard your roll-call, and realized no trooper could have been there.