ong season altogether; then he would come several
times in close succession.

This went on for years, without my being able to accustom myself to
this fearful apparition, without the image of the horrible Sand-man
growing any fainter in my imagination. His intercourse with my father
began to occupy my fancy ever more and more; I was restrained from
asking my father about him by an unconquerable shyness; but as the
years went on the desire waxed stronger and stronger within me to
fathom the mystery myself and to see the fabulous Sand-man. He had been
the means of disclosing to me the path of the wonderful and the
adventurous, which so easily find lodgment in the mind of the child. I
liked nothing better than to hear or read horrible stories of goblins,
witches, Tom Thumbs, and so on; but always at the head of them all
stood the Sand-man, whose picture I scribbled in the most extraordinary
and repulsive forms with both chalk and coal everywhere, on the tables,
and cupboard doors, and walls. When I was ten years old my mother
removed me from the nursery into a little chamber off the corridor not
far from my father's room. We still had to withdraw hastily whenever,
on the stroke of nine, the mysterious unknown was heard in the house.
As I lay in my little chamber I could hear him go into father's room,
and soon afterwards I fancied there was a fine and peculiar smelling
steam spreading itself through the house. As my curiosity waxed
stronger, my resolve to make somehow or other the Sand-man's
acquaintance took deeper root. Often when my mother had gone past, I
slipped quickly out of my room into the corridor, but I could never see
anything, for always before I could reach the place where I could get
sight of him, the Sand-man was well inside the door. At last, unable to
resist the impulse any longer, I determined to conceal myself in
father's room and there wait for the Sand-man.

One evening I perceived from my father's silence and mother's sadness
that the Sand-man would come; accordingly, pleading that I was
excessively tired, I left the room before nine o'clock and concealed
myself in a hiding-place close beside the door. The street door
creaked, and slow, heavy, echoing steps crossed the passage towards
the stairs. Mother hurried past me with my brothers and sisters.
Softly--softly--I opened father's room door. He sat as usual, silent
and motionless, with his back towards it; he did not hear me; and in a
moment I was