out clearly.

It was of a judge dressed in his robes of scarlet and ermine. His face
was strong and merciless, evil, crafty, and vindictive, with a sensual
mouth, hooked nose of ruddy colour, and shaped like the beak of a bird
of prey. The rest of the face was of a cadaverous colour. The eyes were
of peculiar brilliance and with a terribly malignant expression. As he
looked at them, Malcolmson grew cold, for he saw there the very
counterpart of the eyes of the great rat. The lamp almost fell from his
hand, he saw the rat with its baleful eyes peering out through the hole
in the corner of the picture, and noted the sudden cessation of the
noise of the other rats. However, he pulled himself together, and went
on with his examination of the picture.

The Judge was seated in a great high-backed carved oak chair, on the
right-hand side of a great stone fireplace where, in the corner, a rope
hung down from the ceiling, its end lying coiled on the floor. With a
feeling of something like horror, Malcolmson recognised the scene of the
room as it stood, and gazed around him in an awestruck manner as though
he expected to find some strange presence behind him. Then he looked
over to the corner of the fireplace--and with a loud cry he let the lamp
fall from his hand.

There, in the Judge's arm-chair, with the rope hanging behind, sat the
rat with the Judge's baleful eyes, now intensified and with a fiendish
leer. Save for the howling of the storm without there was silence.

The fallen lamp recalled Malcolmson to himself. Fortunately it was of
metal, and so the oil was not spilt. However, the practical need of
attending to it settled at once his nervous apprehensions. When he had