hich a candle was burning, and watched there till
she was fast asleep. I stood at the door, peeping through the small
crevice, my sword laid on the table beside me, as my directions
prescribed, until, a little after one, I saw a large black object, very
ill-defined, crawl, as it seemed to me, over the foot of the bed, and
swiftly spread itself up to the poor girl's throat, where it swelled, in
a moment, into a great, palpitating mass.

"For a few moments I had stood petrified. I now sprang forward, with my
sword in my hand. The black creature suddenly contracted towards the
foot of the bed, glided over it, and, standing on the floor about a yard
below the foot of the bed, with a glare of skulking ferocity and horror
fixed on me, I saw Millarca. Speculating I know not what, I struck at
her instantly with my sword; but I saw her standing near the door,
unscathed. Horrified, I pursued, and struck again. She was gone; and my
sword flew to shivers against the door.

"I can't describe to you all that passed on that horrible night. The
whole house was up and stirring. The specter Millarca was gone. But her
victim was sinking fast, and before the morning dawned, she died."

The old General was agitated. We did not speak to him. My father walked
to some little distance, and began reading the inscriptions on the
tombstones; and thus occupied, he strolled into the door of a side
chapel to prosecute his researches. The General leaned against the wall,
dried his eyes, and sighed heavily. I was relieved on hearing the voices
of Carmilla and Madame, who were at that moment approaching. The voices
died away.

In this solitude, having just listened to so strange a story, connected,
as it was, with the great and titled dead, whose monuments were
moldering among the dust and ivy round us, and every incident of which
bore so awfully upon my own mysterious case--in this haunted spot,
darkened by the towering foliage that rose on every side, dense and high
above its noiseless walls--a horror began to steal over me, and my heart
sank as I thought that my friends were, after all, not about to enter
and disturb this triste and ominous scene.

The old General's eyes were fixed on the ground, as he leaned with his
hand upon the basement of a shattered monument.

Under a narrow, arched doorway, surmounted by one of those demoniacal
grotesques in which the cynical and ghastly fancy of old Gothic carving
delights, I saw very gladly the beautif