I had not, and that if at last this was the print of my
own boot, I had played the part of those fools who strive
to make stories of spectres, and then are themselves
frightened at them more than anybody else.

So I returned home that day in very good spirits. I
carried to my mother a copy of Frank Leslie's Illustrated
Newspaper, which had in it some pictures that I knew
would please her, and I talked with her in as light-
hearted a way as I could, to try to make her think that
I had forgotten my alarm. And afterward we played two or
three games of Egyptian solitaire at the table, and I
went to bed unusually early. But, at the first break of
day, when I fancied or hoped that she was still asleep,
I rose quickly, and half-dressing myself, crept out to
the melon-patch to examine again the imprint of the foot
and to make sure that it was mine.

Alas! it was no more mine than it was Queen
Victoria's. If it had only been cloven, I could easily
have persuaded myself whose it was, so much grief and
trouble had it cost me. When I came to measure the mark
with my own boot, I found, just as I had seen before,
that mine was not nearly so large as this mark was.
Also, this was, as I have said, the mark of a heavy
brogan--such as I never wore--and there was the mark of
a strange patch near the toe, such as I had never seen,
nor, indeed, have seen since, from that hour to this
hour. All these things renewed my terrors. I went home
like a whipped dog, wholly certain now that some one had