nlight As I stared in horror at it, a trembling
seized my whole body, and the hair on my head rose. The dark figure
of a running dog had passed across it--_the dog which lay dead under
the bushes_.

"God's punishment," I murmured, and laid my head down on that
pathetic letter and sobbed.

The morning found me there. It was not till later that the man sent
to bury the dog came to me with the cry, "Something is wrong with
the pavilion! When I went in to close the window I found the ceiling
at that end of the room strangely dabbled. It looks like blood. And
the spots grew as I looked."

Aghast, bruised in spirit and broken of heart, I went down, after
that sweet body was laid in its grave, to look. The stains he had
spoken of were gone. But I lived to see them reappear,--as you have.

God have mercy on our souls!

XII

BEHIND THE WALL

"A most pathetic and awesome history!" I exclaimed, after the pause
which instinctively followed the completion of this tale, read as few of
its kind have ever been read, by this woman of infinite resources in
feeling and expression.

"Is it not? Do you wonder that a visit in the dead of night to a spot
associated with such superstitious horrors should frighten me?" she
added as she bundled up the scattered sheets with a reckless hand.

"I do not. I am not sure but that I am a little bit frightened myself,"
I smiled, following with my eye a single sheet which had escaped to the
floor. "Allow me," I cried, stooping to lift it. As I did so I observed
that it was the first sheet, the torn one--and that a line or so of
writing was visible at the top which I was sure had not been amongst
those she had read.

"What words are those?" I asked.

"I don't know, they are half gone as you can see. They have nothing to
do with the story. I read you the whole of that."

Mistress as she was of her moods and expression I detected traces of
some slight confusion.

"The putting up of the partition is not explained," I remarked.

"Oh, that was put up in horror of the stains which from time to time
broke out on the ceiling at that end of the room."

I wished to ask her if this was her conclusion or if that line or two I
have mentioned was more intelligible than she had acknowledged it to be.
But I refrained from a sense of propriety.

If she appreciated my forbearance she did not show it. Rising, she
thrust the pa