haunt. Under this persuasion I moved myself in bed and coughed a
little, to make the intruder sensible of my being in possession
of the premises. She turned slowly round, but, gracious Heaven!
my lord, what a countenance did she display to me! There was no
longer any question what she was, or any thought of her being a
living being. Upon a face which wore the fixed features of a
corpse were imprinted the traces of the vilest and most hideous
passions which had animated her while she lived. The body of
some atrocious criminal seemed to have been given up from the
grave, and the soul restored from the penal fire, in order to
form for a space a union with the ancient accomplice of its
guilt. I started up in bed, and sat upright, supporting myself
on my palms, as I gazed on this horrible spectre. The hag made,
as it seemed, a single and swift stride to the bed where I lay,
and squatted herself down upon it, in precisely the same attitude
which I had assumed in the extremity of horror, advancing her
diabolical countenance within half a yard of mine, with a grin
which seemed to intimate the malice and the derision of an
incarnate fiend."

Here General Browne stopped, and wiped from his brow the cold
perspiration with which the recollection of his horrible vision
had covered it.

"My lord," he said, "I am no coward, I have been in all the
mortal dangers incidental to my profession, and I may truly boast
that no man ever knew Richard Browne dishonour the sword he
wears; but in these horrible circumstances, under the eyes, and,
as it seemed, almost in the grasp of an incarnation of an evil
spirit, all firmness forsook me, all manhood melted from me like