all just about as queer and _fin de siecle_ as I can well imagine. Look
here, it is nearly twelve, let's dispose of ourselves, if we are going
to hunt this thing down."

The four chambers on this floor of the old house were those said to be
haunted, the wings being quite innocent, and, so far as we knew, the
floors below. It was arranged that we should each occupy a room, leaving
the doors open with the lights burning, and at the slightest cry or
knock we were all to rush at once to the room from which the warning
sound might come. There was no communication between the rooms to be
sure, but, as the doors all opened into the corridor, every sound was
plainly audible.

The last room fell to me, and I looked it over carefully.

It seemed innocent enough, a commonplace, square, rather lofty Parisian
sleeping-room, finished in wood painted white, with a small marble
mantel, a dusty floor of inlaid maple and cherry, walls hung with an
ordinary French paper, apparently quite new, and two deeply embrasured
windows looking out on the court.

I opened the swinging sash with some trouble, and sat down in the window
seat with my lantern beside me trained on the only door, which gave on
the corridor.

The wind had gone down, and it was very still without,--still and hot.
The masses of luminous vapor were gathering thickly overhead, no longer
urged by the gusty wind. The great masses of rank wisteria leaves, with
here and there a second blossoming of purple flowers, hung dead over the
window in the sluggish air. Across the roofs I could hear the sound of a
belated _fiacre_ in the streets below. I filled my pipe again and
waited.

For a time the voices of the men in the other rooms were a
companionship, and at first I shouted to them now and then, but my
voice echoed rather unpleasantly through the long corridors, and had a
suggestive way of reverberating around the left wing beside me, and
coming out at a broken window at its extremity like the voice of another
man. I soon gave up my attempts at conversation, and devoted myself to
the task of keeping awake.

It was not easy; why did I eat that lettuce salad at Pere Garceau's? I
should have known better. It was making me irresistibly sleepy, and
wakefulness was absolutely necessary. It was certainly gratifying to
know that I could sleep, that my courage was by me to that extent, but
in the interests of science I must keep awake. But almost never, it
seemed, had sleep looked