at the
apparition without moving or speaking. Seeing that she had not obeyed
him, his face became more frightful and menacing, and as it underwent
this change, he raised his hand and stamped on the floor. Gesture,
look, and all, expressed diabolical fury. Through sheer extremity of
terror she did rise, and, as he turned again, followed him a step or
two in the direction of the door. He again stopped, and with the same
mute menace, compelled her again to follow him.

She reached the narrow stone doorway of the Earl's Hall, through which
he had passed; from the threshold she saw him standing a little way
off, with his eyes still fixed on her. Again he signed to her, and
began to move along the short passage that leads to the winding stair.
But instead of following him further, she fell on the floor in a fit.

The poor lady was thoroughly persuaded that she was not long to
survive this vision, and her foreboding proved true. From her bed she
never rose. Fever and delirium supervened in a few days and she died.
Of course it is possible that fever, already approaching, had touched
her brain when she was visited by the phantom, and that it had no
external existence.

THE VISION OF TOM CHUFF

At the edge of melancholy Catstean Moor, in the north of England, with
half-a-dozen ancient poplar-trees with rugged and hoary stems around,
one smashed across the middle by a flash of lightning thirty summers
before, and all by their great height dwarfing the abode near which
they stand, there squats a rude stone house, with a thick chimney, a
kitchen and bedroom on the ground-floor, and a loft, accessible by a
ladder, under the shingle roof, divided into two rooms.

Its owner was a man of ill repute. Tom Chuff was his name. A
shock-headed, broad-shouldered, powerful man, though somewhat short,
with lowering brows and a sullen eye. He was a poacher, and hardly
made an ostensible pretence of earning his bread by any honest
industry. He was a drunkard. He beat his wife, and led his children a
life of terror and lamentation, when he was at home. It was a blessing
to his frightened little family when he absented himself, as he
sometimes did, for a week or more together.

On the night I speak of he knocked at the door with his cudgel at
about eight o'clock. It was winter, and the night was very dark. Had
the summons been that of a bogie from the moor, the inmates of this
small house could hardly have heard it with greater terr