ious ring in
motion?'

"'Prosaic wretch!' cried Vincent: but everybody laughed."

"The pendulum-oscillations of rings drove me nearly crazy at one time,"
said Theodore. "Thus much is matter of absolute certainty, and any one
can convince himself of it, that the oscillations of a plain gold ring,
suspended by a fine thread over the palm of the hand held level,
unquestionably take the direction which the unuttered will directs them
to take. I cannot tell you how profoundly, and how eerily, this
phenomenon affected me. I used to sit for hours at a time making the
ring go swinging in the most various directions, as I willed it to do;
and at last I went the length of making a regular oracle of it. I would
say, in my mind, if such and such a thing is going to happen, the ring
will swing in the direction between the little finger and the thumb; if
it is not going to happen, it will swing at right angles to that
direction, and so on."'

"Delightful!" said Lothair, "you set up, within your own self, a higher
spiritual principle, which, conjured up in mystic fashion by yourself,
should make utterances to you. Here we have the true "spiritus
familiaris," the socratic daemon! from hence there is only a very short
step to the region of ghost, and haunting stories, which might easily
have their _raison d'etre_ in the influence of some exterior spiritual
principle."

"And I mean to actually take this step," said Cyprian, "by telling you,
on the spot, the most awful and terrible supernatural story I have ever
heard of. The peculiarity of this story is, that it is amply vouched
for by persons of credibility, and that the manner in which it has been
brought to my knowledge, or recollection, has to do with the excited,
or (if you prefer to say so) disordered condition which Lothair
observed me to be in a short time ago."

Cyprian stood up; and, as was his habit when his mind was full of
something, so that he had to take a little time to arrange his words in
order to express it, he walked several times up and down the room.
Presently he sat down, and began:--

"You may remember that some little time ago, just before the last
campaign, I was paying a visit to Colonel Von P---- at his country
house. The colonel was a good-tempered, jovial man, and his wife
quietness and simpleness personified. At the time I speak of the son
was away with the army, so that the family circle consisted, besides
the colonel and his lady, of two daughters