clock already! Well, I'll be going up to
watch from the haunted room. I think, Jeff, that you'll bring me luck
to-night."

"I am sure I shall!" I answered sardonically, as he departed.

Three quarters of an hour later, wearing the Crusader's helmet and
swathed in a bedsheet, I let myself down from the window to the haunted
wall below. It was moonlight, bitter cold as I crouched on the wall,
waiting for the stroke of twelve, when I should act the spook and walk
along that precarious ledge to rescue Anita.

The "haunted wall," I observed from where I stood, was shaped like an
irregular crescent, being in plain view of Hobson's "haunted room" at
the middle, but not so at its north and south ends, where my chamber and
Anita's tower were respectively situated. I pulled out my watch from
under my winding-sheet. Three minutes of twelve. I drew down the vizor
of my helmet and gathered up my cerements preparatory to walking the
hundred feet of wall which would bring me in sight of the haunted room
where old Hobson kept his vigil. Two minutes, one minute I waited,
when--I suddenly realized I was not alone.

A man wearing a long cloak and a feather in his cap was coming toward me
along the moonlit masonry. Aha! So I was not the only masquerading swain
calling on the captive princess in the prison tower. A jealous pang shot
through me as I realized this.

The man was within twenty feet of me, when I noticed something. He was
not walking on the wall. _He was walking on air, three or four feet
above the wall._ Nearer and nearer came the man--the Thing--now into
the light of the moon, whose beams seemed to strike through his misty
tissue like the thrust of a sword. I was horribly scared. My knees
loosened under me, and I clutched the vines at my back to save me from
falling into the moat below. Now I could see his face, and somehow fear
seemed to leave me. His expression was so young and human.

"Ghost of the Pierrepont," I thought, "whether you walk in shadow or in
light, you lived among a race of Men!"

His noble, pallid face seemed to burn with its own pale light, but his
eyes were in darkness. He was now within two yards of me. I could see
the dagger at his belt. I could see the gory cut on his forehead. I
attempted to speak, but my voice creaked like a rusty hinge. He neither
heeded nor saw me; and when he came to the spot where I stood, he did
not turn out for me. He walked _through_ me! And when next I saw him he
was a