evening-dress which, while he spoke, I was rapidly changing for that which
I habitually wore in the morning. "I hope you did not feel yourself ill?"

"No! but it seems I fell asleep in my chair."

"Did you hear, sir, how the dogs howled about two o'clock in the morning?
They woke me. Very frightful!"

"The moon was at her full. Dogs will bay at the moon."

I felt relieved to think that I should not find Strahan in the
breakfast-room; and hastening through the ceremony of a meal which I
scarcely touched, I went out into the park unobserved, and creeping round
the copses and into the neglected gardens, made my way to the pavilion. I
mounted the stairs; I looked on the floor of the upper room; yes, there
still was the black figure of the pentacle, the circle. So, then, it was
not a dream! Till then I had doubted. Or might it not still be so far a
dream that I had walked in my sleep, and with an imagination preoccupied
by my conversations with Margrave,--by the hieroglyphics on the staff I
had handled, by the very figure associated with superstitious practices
which I had copied from some weird book at his request, by all the strange
impressions previously stamped on my mind,--might I not, in truth, have
carried thither in sleep the staff, described the circle, and all the rest
been but visionary delusion? Surely, surely, so common-sense, and so
Julius Faber would interpret the riddles that perplexed me! Be that as it
may, my first thought was to efface the marks on the floor. I found this
easier than I had ventured to hope. I rubbed the circle and the pentacle
away from the boards with the sole of my foot, leaving but an
undistinguishable smudge behind. I know not why, but I felt the more
nervously anxious to remove all such evidences of my nocturnal visit to