cook, I
say, saw something--a figure--or a deep shadow--only a deep shadow--or
maybe a dog. She lifted the candle--she peeped under the candlestick:
'twas no shadow, as I live, 'twas a well-defined figure!

He was draped in black, cowering low, with the face turned up. It was
Charles Nutter's face, fixed and stealthy. It was only while the
fascination lasted--while you might count one, two, three,
deliberately--that the horrid gaze met mutually. But there was no
mistake there. She saw the stern dark picture as plainly as ever she
did. The light glimmered on his white eye-balls.

Starting up, he struck at the candle with his hat. She uttered a loud
scream, and flinging stick and all at the figure, with a great clang
against the door behind, all was swallowed in instantaneous darkness;
she whirled into the opposite bed-room she knew not how, and locked the
door within, and plunged head-foremost under the bed-clothes, half mad
with terror.

The squall was heard of course. Moggy heard it, but she heeded not; for
Betty was known to scream at mice, and even moths. And as her door was
heard to slam, as was usual in panics of the sort, and as she returned
no answer, Moggy was quite sure there was nothing in it.

But Moggy's turn was to come. When spirits 'walk,' I've heard they make
the most of their time, and sometimes pay a little round of visits on
the same evening.

This is certain; Moggy was by no means so great a fool as Betty in
respect of hobgoblins, witches, banshees, pookas, and the world of
spirits in general. She eat heartily, and slept soundly, and as yet had
never seen the devil. Therefore such terrors as she that night
experienced were new to her, and I can't reasonably doubt the truth of
her narrative. Awaking suddenly in the night, she saw a light in the
room, and heard a quiet rustling going on in the corner, where the old
white-painted press showed its front from the wall. So Moggy popped her
head through her thin curtains at the side, and--blessed hour!--there
she saw the shape of a man looking into the press, the doors being wide
open, and the appearance of a key in the lock.

The shape was very like her master. The saints between us and harm! The
glow was reflected back from the interior of the press, and showed the
front part of the figure in profile with a sharp line of light. She said
he had some sort of thick slippers over his boots, a dark coat, with the
cape buttoned, and a hat flapping over