man's. It was in the dress of the last century, or rather in a
likeness of such dress (for both the male shape and the female, though
defined, were evidently unsubstantial, impalpable,--simulacra,
phantasms); and there was something incongruous, grotesque, yet
fearful, in the contrast between the elaborate finery, the courtly
precision of that old-fashioned garb, with its ruffles and lace and
buckles, and the corpse-like aspect and ghost-like stillness of the
flitting wearer. Just as the male shape approached the female, the
dark Shadow started from the wall, all three for a moment wrapped in
darkness. When the pale light returned, the two phantoms were as if in
the grasp of the Shadow that towered between them; and there was a
blood-stain on the breast of the female; and the phantom male was
leaning on its phantom sword, and blood seemed trickling fast from the
ruffles, from the lace; and the darkness of the intermediate Shadow
swallowed them up,--they were gone. And again the bubbles of light
shot, and sailed, and undulated, growing thicker and thicker and more
wildly confused in their movements.

The closet door to the right of the fireplace now opened, and from the
aperture there came the form of an aged woman. In her hand she held
letters,--the very letters over which I had seen _the_ Hand close; and
behind her I heard a footstep. She turned round as if to listen, and
then she opened the letters and seemed to read; and over her shoulder
I saw a livid face, the face as of a man long drowned,--bloated,
bleached, seaweed tangled in its dripping hair; and at her feet lay a
form as of a corpse; and beside the corpse there cowered a child, a
miserable, squalid child, with famine in its cheeks and fear in its
eyes. And as I looked in the old woman's face, the wrinkles and lines
vanished, and it became a face of youth,--hard-eyed, stony, but still
youth; and the Shadow darted forth, and darkened over these phantoms