TO BE UNFOLDED.

It was an awful night, indeed, on which all this occurred, and that
apparition had shown itself up at the Mills. And truly it would seem the
devil had business on his hands, for in the cedar-parlour of the Tiled
House another unexpected manifestation occurred just about the same
hour.

What gentleman is there of broken fortunes, undefined rights, and in
search of evidence, without a legal adviser of some sort? Mr. Mervyn, of
course, had his, and paid for the luxury according to custom. And every
now and then off went a despatch from the Tiled House to the oracular
London attorney; sometimes it was a budget of evidence, and sometimes
only a string of queries. To-night, to the awful diapason of the
storm--he was penning one of these--the fruit of a tedious study of many
papers and letters, tied up in bundles by his desk, all of them redolent
of ominous or fearful associations.

I don't know why it is the hours fly with such a strange celerity in the
monotony and solitude of such nightwork. But Mervyn was surprised, as
many a one similarly occupied has been, on looking at his watch, to find
that it was now long past midnight; so he threw himself back in his
chair with a sigh, and thought how vainly his life was speeding away,
and heard, with a sort of wonder, how mad was the roar of the storm
without, while he had quietly penned his long rescript undisturbed.

The wild bursts of supernatural fury and agony which swell and mingle in
a hurricane, I dare say, led his imagination a strange aerial journey
through the dark. Now it was the baying of hell hounds, and the long
shriek of the spirit that flies before them. Anon it was the bellowing
thunder of an ocean, and the myriad voices of shipwreck. And the old
house quivering from base to cornice under the strain; and then there
would come a pause, like a gasp, and the tempest once more rolled up,
and the same mad hubbub shook and clamoured at the windows.

So he let his Pegasus spread his pinions on the blast, and mingled with
the wild rout that peopled the darkness; or, in plainer words, he
abandoned his fancy to the haunted associations of the hour, the storm,
and the house, with a not unpleasant horror. In one of these momentary
lulls of the wind, there came a sharp, distinct knocking on the
window-pane. He remembered with a thrill the old story of the
supernatural hand which had troubled that house, and began its pranks at
this very window.

Ay, a