steps and passed into the mysterious house; when the swinging door
disclosed a black passage into which the figure seemed to lose
itself and become a part of the mysterious gloom; when the night
grew boisterous and the fierce wind made furious charges at the
knocker, as if to wrench it off and carry it away in triumph. Such
a night as this.

It was a wild and pitiless wind. A wind that had commenced life as
a gentle country zephyr, but wandering through manufacturing towns
had become demoralized, and reaching the city had plunged into
extravagant dissipation and wild excesses. A roistering wind that
indulged in Bacchanalian shouts on the street corners, that knocked
off the hats from the heads of helpless passengers, and then
fulfilled its duties by speeding away, like all young prodigals,--
to sea.

He sat alone in a gloomy library listening to the wind that roared
in the chimney. Around him novels and story-books were strewn
thickly; in his lap he held one with its pages freshly cut, and
turned the leaves wearily until his eyes rested upon a portrait in
its frontispiece. And as the wind howled the more fiercely, and
the darkness without fell blacker, a strange and fateful likeness
to that portrait appeared above his chair and leaned upon his
shoulder. The Haunted Man gazed at the portrait and sighed. The
figure gazed at the portrait and sighed too.

"Here again?" said the Haunted Man.

"Here again," it repeated in a low voice.