irst a suspicion
of anything supernatural, on a sudden I saw an old man, rather stout and
square, in a sort of roan-red dressing-gown, and with a black cap on his
head, moving stiffly and slowly in a diagonal direction, from the
recess, across the floor of the bedroom, passing my bed at the foot, and
entering the lumber-closet at the left. He had something under his arm;
his head hung a little at one side; and, merciful God! when I saw his
face."

Tom stopped for a while, and then said----

"That awful countenance, which living or dying I never can forget,
disclosed what he was. Without turning to the right or left, he passed
beside me, and entered the closet by the bed's head.

"While this fearful and indescribable type of death and guilt was
passing, I felt that I had no more power to speak or stir than if I had
been myself a corpse. For hours after it had disappeared, I was too
terrified and weak to move. As soon as daylight came, I took courage,
and examined the room, and especially the course which the frightful
intruder had seemed to take, but there was not a vestige to indicate
anybody's having passed there; no sign of any disturbing agency visible
among the lumber that strewed the floor of the closet.

"I now began to recover a little. I was fagged and exhausted, and at
last, overpowered by a feverish sleep. I came down late; and finding you
out of spirits, on account of your dreams about the portrait, whose
_original_ I am now certain disclosed himself to me, I did not care to
talk about the infernal vision. In fact, I was trying to persuade myself
that the whole thing was an illusion, and I did not like to revive in
their intensity the hated impressions of the past night--or to risk the
constancy of my scepticism, by recounting the tale of my sufferings.

"It required some nerve, I can tell you, to go to my haunted chamber
next night, and lie down quietly in the same bed," continued Tom. "I did
so with a degree of trepidation, which, I am not ashamed to say, a very
little matter would have sufficed to stimulate to downright panic. This
night, however, passed off quietly enough, as also the next; and so too
did two or three more. I grew more confident, and began to fancy that I
believed in the theories of spectral illusions, with which I had at
first vainly tried to impose upon my convictions.

"The apparition had been, indeed, altogether anomalous. It had crossed
the room without any recognition of my pr