wax in the furnace, and I felt my hair individually bristle. The
current of my life-blood ceased to flow, and I sank back in a
swoon, as very a victim to panic terror as ever was a village
girl, or a child of ten years old. How long I lay in this
condition I cannot pretend to guess.

"But I was roused by the castle clock striking one, so loud that
it seemed as if it were in the very room. It was some time
before I dared open my eyes, lest they should again encounter the
horrible spectacle. When, however, I summoned courage to look
up, she was no longer visible. My first idea was to pull my
bell, wake the servants, and remove to a garret or a hay-loft, to
be ensured against a second visitation. Nay, I will confess the
truth that my resolution was altered, not by the shame of
exposing myself, but by the fear that, as the bell-cord hung by
the chimney, I might, in making my way to it, be again crossed by
the fiendish hag, who, I figured to myself, might be still
lurking about some corner of the apartment.

"I will not pretend to describe what hot and cold fever-fits
tormented me for the rest of the night, through broken sleep,
weary vigils, and that dubious state which forms the neutral
ground between them. A hundred terrible objects appeared to
haunt me; but there was the great difference betwixt the vision
which I have described, and those which followed, that I knew the
last to be deceptions of my own fancy and over-excited nerves.

"Day at last appeared, and I rose from my bed ill in health and
humiliated in mind. I was ashamed of myself as a man and a
soldier, and still more so at feeling my own extreme desire to