up by the sounds of horse's hoofs--of hoofs on the hard
gravel, away in the distance. They speedily grow nearer. A horse is
galloping, galloping towards me along the broad carriage drive. Nearer,
nearer and nearer it comes! Who is it? WHAT is it? A deadly nausea
seizes me, I swerve, totter, reel, and am only prevented from falling by
the timely interference of a pine. The concussion with its leviathan
trunk clears my senses. All my faculties become wonderfully and
painfully alert. I would give my very soul if it were not so--if I could
but fall asleep or faint. The sound of the hoofs is very much nearer
now, so near indeed that I may see the man--Heaven grant it may be only
a man after all--any moment. Ah! my heart gives a great sickly jerk.
Something has shot into view. There, not fifty yards from me, where the
road curves, and the break in the foliage overhead admits a great flood
of moonlight. I recognize the "thing" at once; it's not a man, it's
nothing human, it's the picture I know so well and dread so much, the
portrait of Horace Wimpole, that hangs in the main hall--and it's
mounted on a coal-black horse with wildly flying mane and foaming mouth.
On and on they come, thud, thud, thud! The man is not dressed as a
rider, but is wearing the costume in the picture--i.e. that of a
macaroni! A nut! More fit for a lady's seminary than a fine, old English
mansion.

"Something beside me rustles--rustles angrily, and I know, I can feel,
it is the bundle on the branch--the ghastly, groaning, creaking,
croaking caricature of Sir Algernon. The horseman comes up to me--our
eyes meet--I am looking in those of a dead--of a long since dead man--my
blood freezes.

"He flashes past me--thud, thud, thud! A bend in the road, and he
vanishes from sight. But I can still hear him, still hear the mad patter
of his horse's hoofs as they bear him onward, lifeless, fleshless,
weightless, to his ancient home. God pity the souls that know no rest.

"How I got back to the house I hardly know. I believe it was with my
eyes shut, and I am certain I ran all the way.

"About four o'clock the following afternoon I received a cablegram from
Malta. Intuition warned me to prepare for the worst. Its contents were
unpleasantly short and pithy--'Hal drowned at two o'clock this
morning.--Dick.'

"Two years passed--again an August night, hot and oppressive as before,
and again--though surely against my will, my better judgment, if you
like--I visite