should become fact, and from behind the whin-bush or the elder-hedge
should glide forth the tall swaying form of the Boneless. When alone in
bed, I used to lie awake, and look out into the room, peopling it with
the forms of all the persons who had died within the scope of my memory
and acquaintance. These fancied forms were vividly present to my
imagination. I pictured them pale, with dark circles around their hollow
eyes, visible by a light which glimmered within them; not the light of
life, but a pale, greenish phosphorescence, generated by the decay of
the brain inside. Their garments were white and trailing, but torn and
soiled, as by trying often in vain to get up out of the buried coffin.
But so far from being terrified by these imaginings, I used to delight
in them; and in the long winter evenings, when I did not happen to have
any book that interested me sufficiently, I used even to look forward
with expectation to the hour when, laying myself straight upon my back,
as if my bed were my coffin, I could call up from underground all who
had passed away, and see how they fared, yea, what progress they had
made towards final dissolution of form--but all the time, with my
fingers pushed hard into my ears, lest the faintest sound should invade
the silent citadel of my soul. If inadvertently I removed one of my
fingers, the agony of terror I instantly experienced is indescribable. I
can compare it to nothing but the rushing in upon my brain of a whole
churchyard of spectres. The very possibility of hearing a sound, in such
a mood, and at such a time, was almost enough to paralyse me. So I could
scare myself in broad daylight, on the open hillside, by imagining
unintelligible sounds; and my imagination was both original and fertile
in the invention of such. But my mind was too active to be often
subjected to such influences. Indeed life would have been hardly
endurable had these moods been of more than occasional occurrence. As I
grew older, I almost outgrew them. Yet sometimes one awful dread would
seize me--that, perhaps, the prophetic power manifest in the gift of