The form was that of a man with a loose coat about him, which, as he ran,
he disengaged, and as well as Larkin could see, for the moon was again
wading in clouds, threw from him. The figure thus advanced until within
some two score yards of him, it arrested its speed, and approached with a
loose, swaggering gait. The moon again shone out bright and clear, and,
gracious God! what was the spectacle before him? He saw as distinctly as
if he had been presented there in the flesh, Ned Moran, himself, stripped
naked from the waist upward, as if for pugilistic combat, and drawing
towards him in silence. Larkin would have shouted, prayed, cursed, fled
across the Park, but he was absolutely powerless; the apparition stopped
within a few steps, and leered on him with a ghastly mimicry of the
defiant stare with which pugilists strive to cow one another before
combat. For a time, which he could not so much as conjecture, he was held
in the fascination of that unearthly gaze, and at last the thing,
whatever it was, on a sudden swaggered close up to him with extended
palms. With an impulse of horror, Larkin put out his hand to keep the
figure off, and their palms touched--at least, so he believed--for a
thrill of unspeakable agony, running through his arm, pervaded his entire
frame, and he fell senseless to the earth.

Though Larkin lived for many years after, his punishment was terrible. He
was incurably maimed; and being unable to work, he was forced, for
existence, to beg alms of those who had once feared and flattered him. He
suffered, too, increasingly, under his own horrible interpretation of the
preternatural encounter which was the beginning of all his miseries. It
was vain to endeavour to shake his faith in the reality of the
apparition, and equally vain, as some compassionately did, to try to
persuade him that the greeting with which his vision closed was intended,
while inflicting a temporary trial, to signify a compensating