failed to wake her, he might grabble at the counterpane with palsy-
twitching fingers. As for the twins, he was quite determined to
teach them a lesson. The first thing to be done was, of course, to
sit upon their chests, so as to produce the stifling sensation of
nightmare. Then, as their beds were quite close to each other, to
stand between them in the form of a green, icy-cold corpse, till
they became paralysed with fear, and finally, to throw off the
winding-sheet, and crawl round the room, with white bleached bones
and one rolling eye-ball, in the character of 'Dumb Daniel, or the
Suicide's Skeleton,' a role in which he had on more than one
occasion produced a great effect, and which he considered quite
equal to his famous part of 'Martin the Maniac, or the Masked
Mystery.'

At half-past ten he heard the family going to bed. For some time he
was disturbed by wild shrieks of laughter from the twins, who, with
the light-hearted gaiety of schoolboys, were evidently amusing
themselves before they retired to rest, but at a quarter past eleven
all was still, and, as midnight sounded, he sallied forth. The owl
beat against the window panes, the raven croaked from the old yew-
tree, and the wind wandered moaning round the house like a lost
soul; but the Otis family slept unconscious of their doom, and high
above the rain and storm he could hear the steady snoring of the
Minister for the United States. He stepped stealthily out of the
wainscoting, with an evil smile on his cruel, wrinkled mouth, and
the moon hid her face in a cloud as he stole past the great oriel
window, where his own arms and those of his murdered wife were
blazoned in azure and gold. On and on he glided, like an evil
shadow, the very darkness seeming to loathe him as he passed. Once
he thought he heard something call, and stopped; but it was only the