inted at the
possible necessity of sending for me at no distant period, and I
remembered the fact too well to need the reminder.

'It was nearly midnight when we drove down the Rue St. Denis, turned
into La Reynie Ogniard, and drew up at the antiquated door I had once
entered nearly three months earlier. We entered as before, rang the bell
as before, and were admitted into the inner room by the same slattern
girl. I remember at this moment one impression which this person made
upon me--that she did not wash so often as four times a year, and that
the _same old dirt_ was upon her face that had been crusted there at the
time of my previous visit. There seemed no change in the room, except
that _two_ tapers, and each larger than the one I had previously seen,
were burning upon the table. The curtain was down, as before, and when
it suddenly rose, after a few minutes spent in waiting, and the
blood-red woman stood in the vacant space, all seemed so exactly as it
had done on the previous visit, that it would have been no difficult
matter to believe the past three months a mere imagination, and this the
same first visit renewed.

'The illusion, such as it was, did not last long, however. The sorceress
fixed her eyes full upon me, with the red flame seeming to play through
the eyeballs as it had before done through her cheeks, and said, in a
voice lower, more sad and broken, than it had been when addressing me on
the previous occasion:

''Young American, I have sent for you, and you have done well to come.
Do not fear----'

''I do _not_ fear--you, or any one!' I answered, a little piqued that
she should have drawn any such impression from my appearance. I may have
been uttering a fib of magnificent proportions at the moment, but one
has a right to deny cowardice to the last gasp, whatever else he must
admit.

''You do not? It is well, then!' she said in reply, and in the same low,
sad voice. 'You will have courage, then, perhaps, to see what I will
show you from the land of shadows.'

''Whom does it concern?' I asked. 'Myself, or some other?'

''Yourself, and many others--all the world!' uttered the lips of flame.
'It is of your country that I would show you.'

''My country? God of heaven! What has happened to my country?' broke
from my lips almost before I knew what I was uttering. I suppose the
words came almost like a groan, for I had been deeply anxious over the
state of affairs known to exist at home, and perhap