through the apartment.

I turned my eyes toward the door once more, and beheld, to my
astonishment, a very small old woman, who hobbled along the corridor
and into the hall. She passed backward and forward several times, and
then, crouching down at the very edge of the circle upon the floor, she
disclosed a face the horrible malignity of which shall never be
banished from my recollection. Every foul passion appeared to have left
its mark upon that hideous countenance.

"Ha! ha!" she screamed, holding out her wizened hands like the talons
of an unclean bird. "You see what I am. I am the fiendish old woman. I
wear snuff-coloured silks. My curse descends on people. Sir Walter was
partial to me. Shall I be thine, mortal?"

I endeavoured to shake my head in horror; on which she aimed a blow at
me with her crutch, and vanished with an eldritch scream.

By this time my eyes turned naturally toward the open door, and I was
hardly surprised to see a man walk in of tall and noble stature. His
face was deadly pale, but was surmounted by a fringe of dark hair which
fell in ringlets down his back. A short pointed beard covered his chin.
He was dressed in loose-fitting clothes, made apparently of yellow
satin, and a large white ruff surrounded his neck. He paced across the
room with slow and majestic strides. Then turning, he addressed me in a
sweet, exquisitely-modulated voice.

"I am the cavalier," he remarked. "I pierce and am pierced. Here is my
rapier. I clink steel. This is a blood-stain over my heart. I can emit
hollow groans. I am patronized by many old Conservative families. I am
the original manor-house apparition. I work alone, or in company with
shrieking damsels."

He bent his head courteously, as though awaiting my reply, but the same
choking sensation prevented me from speaking; and, with a deep bow, he
disappeared.

He had hardly gone before a feeling of intense horror stole over me,
and I was aware of the presence of a ghastly creature in the room of
dim outlines and uncertain proportions. One moment it seemed to pervade
the entire apartment, while at another it would become invisible, but
always leaving behind it a distinct consciousness of its presence. Its
voice, when it spoke, was quavering and gusty. It said, "I am the
leaver of footsteps and the spiller of gouts of blood. I tramp upon
corridors. Charles Dickens has alluded to me. I make strange and
disagreeable noises. I snatch letters and place invisib