our most noted masters of literature. I drew one of the queer
high-backed chairs scattered about the room, towards the table,
and sat down to enjoy a "feast of reason and a flow of soul." As
I turned the mildewed page, something suddenly fell with a dull
"flop" upon the paper. It was a drop of blood! I stared at it
with a strange sensation of mingled horror and astonishment. Could
it have been upon the page before I turned it? No; it was wet
and bright, and presented the uneven, broken disc which drops of
liquid always possess when they fall from a considerable height.
Besides I had heard and seen it fall. I put the book down on the
table and looked upward at the ceiling. There was nothing visible
there save the grey dirt of years. I looked closely at the hideous
blotch, and saw it rapidly soaking and widening its way into the
paper, already softened with age. As, of course, after this incident
I was not inclined to continue my studies of Addison and Steele,
I shut the volume and replaced it on the shelves. Turning back
towards the table to take up my candle, my eyes rested upon a full-
length portrait immediately facing the bookcase. It was that of
a young and handsome woman with glossy black hair coiled round her
head, but, I thought, with something repulsive in the proud, stony
face and shadowed eyes. I raised the light above my head to get
a better view of the painting. As I did this, it seemed to me that
the countenance of the figure changed, or rather that a Thing came
between me and it. It was a momentary distortion, as though a gust
of wind had passed across the portrait and disturbed the outline
of the features; the how and the why I know not, but the face changed;
nor shall I ever forget the sudden horror of the look it assumed.
It was like that face of phantom ghastliness that we see sometimes
in the delirium of fever,--the face that meets us and turns upon
us in the mazes of nightmare, with a look that wakes us in the