drew nearer, however, a thing happened so remarkable as to draw
our attention in a moment from all these points, and bring us, gaping,
to a standstill. The shutters of the two windows were suddenly closed
before our eyes with a clap that came sharply on the wind. Then, in a
twinkling, one window flew open again and a man, seemingly naked,
bounded from it, fled with inconceivable rapidity across the front of
the house and vanished through the other window, which opened to
receive him. He had scarcely gained that shelter before a coal-black
figure followed him, leaping out of the one window and in at the other
with the same astonishing swiftness--a swiftness which was so great
that before any of us could utter more than an exclamation, the two
figures appeared again round the corner of the house, in the same
order, but this time with so small an interval that the fugitive barely
saved himself through the window. Once more, while we stared in
stupefaction, they flashed out and in; and this time it seemed to me
that as they vanished the black spectre seized its victim.

When I say that all this time the two figures uttered no sound, that
there was no other living being in sight, and that on every side of the
solitary house the moor, growing each minute more eerie as the day
waned, spread to the horizon, the more superstitious among us may be
pardoned if they gave way to their fears. La Font was the first to
speak.

"MON DIEU!" he cried--while the girl moaned in terror, the Breton
crossed himself, and La Trape looked uncomfortable--"the place is
bewitched!"

"Nonsense!" I said. "Who is in the house, girl?"

"Only my mother," she wailed. "Oh, my poor mother!"

I silenced her, scolding them all for fools, and her first; and La
Font, recovering himself, did the same. But this was the year of that
strange appearance of the spectre horseman at Fontainebleau of which so
much has been said; and my servants, when we had approached the house a
little nearer, and it still remained silent and, as it were, dead to
the eye, would go no farther, but stood in sheer terror and permitted
me to go on alone with La Font. I confess that the loneliness of the
house, and the dreary waste that surrounded it (which seemed to exclude
the idea of trickery) were not without their effect on my spirits; and
that as I dismounted and approached the door, I felt a kind of chill
not remarkable under the circumstances.

But the courage of