in its light as in a hay-loft in the summer season.

But that was not the worst of it. In my dream my eyes followed the
direction of the broad beam, and lo! they fell directly on the poor
blackened head of him that had once been John Gordon of Lochinvar. The
suns and rains had not dealt kindly with him, and now the face looked
like nothing earthly, as I saw it in the moonlight of the ugsome vault.
I could have screamed aloud, for there seemed to be a frown on the brow
and a writhed grin on the mouth that boded me irksome evils to come.

Now half a dozen times I have resolved to leave out of my tale, that
which I then saw happen in my dream of the night. For what I am about to
relate may not meet with belief in these times, when the power of Satan
is mercifully restrained; and when he can no longer cast his glamourie
over whom he will, but only over those who, like witch-wives and others,
yield themselves up to him as his willing subjects.

But I shall tell plainly what, in the moonlight, seemed to me to befal
in my dream-sleep.

It appeared then to me that I was staring at the blackened head, with
something rising and falling in my throat like water in a sobbing well,
when the ground slowly stirred in the corner where the head lay, and
even as I looked, a beast came forth--a grey beast with four legs, but
blind of eye like a grey mowdiewort, which took the head between its
forepaws and rocked it to and fro as a mother rocks a fretful bairn,
sorrowing over it and pitying it. It was a prodigy to see the eyes
looking forth from the bone-sockets of the head. Then the beast left it
again lying by its lone and went and digged in the corner. As the
moonlight swept across, broad and slow, through the loud beating of my
heart, I heard the grey mowdiewort dig the hole deeper and yet deeper.
Now the thing that made me fullest of terror was not the digging of the
beast, but the manner of its throwing out the earth, which was not
behind it as a dog does, but in front, out of the pit, as a sexton that
digs a grave.

Then, ere the moonbeams quite left it and began to climb the wall, I
seemed to see the beast roll the black Thing to the edge and cover it
up, drawing the earth over it silently. After that, in my fantasy, it
seemed to look at me. I heard the quick patter of its feet, and with a
cry of fear I started up to flee, lest the beast should come towards
me--and with that I knew no more.

CHAPTER XVII.

OVER THE MU