removed from him, and Larry was a dead shot. But this time he made a
scandalous miss, for the shot knocked a little white dust from the stone
wall a full yard at one side; and the fellow never shifted his negligent
posture or qualified his sardonic smile during the procedure.

Larry was mortified and angry.

"You'll not get off this time, my tulip!" he said with a grin,
exchanging the smoking weapon for the loaded pistol in reserve.

"What are you pistolling, Larry?" said a familiar voice close by his
elbow, and he saw his master, accompanied by a handsome young man in a
cloak.

"That villain, your honour, in the window, there."

"Why there's nobody there, Larry," said De Lacy, with a laugh, though
that was no common indulgence with him.

As Larry gazed, the figure somehow dissolved and broke up without
receding. A hanging tuft of yellow and red ivy nodded queerly in place
of the face, some broken and discoloured masonry in perspective took up
the outline and colouring of the arms and figure, and two imperfect red
and yellow lichen streaks carried on the curved tracing of the long
spindle shanks. Larry blessed himself, and drew his hand across his damp
forehead, over his bewildered eyes, and could not speak for a minute.
It was all some devilish trick; he could take his oath he saw every
feature in the fellow's face, the lace and buttons of his cloak and
doublet, and even his long finger nails and thin yellow fingers that
overhung the cross-shaft of the window, where there was now nothing but