catalogue of news soon palled upon him, and Clarke would find himself
casting glances of warm desire in the direction of an old Japanese
bureau, which stood at a pleasant distance from the hearth. Like a boy
before a jam-closet, for a few minutes he would hover indecisive, but
lust always prevailed, and Clarke ended by drawing up his chair,
lighting a candle, and sitting down before the bureau. Its pigeonholes
and drawers teemed with documents on the most morbid subjects, and in
the well reposed a large manuscript volume, in which he had painfully
entered the gems of his collection. Clarke had a fine contempt for
published literature; the most ghostly story ceased to interest him if
it happened to be printed; his sole pleasure was in the reading,
compiling, and rearranging what he called his 'Memoirs to prove the
Existence of the Devil,' and engaged in this pursuit the evening seemed
to fly and the night appeared too short.

On one particular evening, an ugly December night, black with fog, and
raw with frost, Clarke hurried over his dinner, and scarcely deigned to
observe his customary ritual of taking up the paper and laying it down
again. He paced two or three times up and down the room, and opened the
bureau, stood still a moment, and sat down. He leant back, absorbed in
one of those dreams to which he was subject, and at length drew out his
book, and opened it at the last entry. There were three or four pages
densely covered with Clarke's round, set penmanship, and at the
beginning he had written in a somewhat larger hand:

Singular Narrative told me by my Friend, Dr. Phillips. He assures me
that all the facts related therein are strictly and wholly True, but
refuses to give either the Surnames of the Persons concerned, or the
Place where these Extraordinary Events occurred.

Mr. Clarke began to read over the account for the tenth time, glancing
now and then at the pencil notes he had made when it was told him by his
friend. It was one of his humours to pride himself on a certain literary
ability; he thought well of his style, and took pains in arranging the
circumstances in dramatic order. He read the following story:--

The persons concerned in this statement are Helen V., who, if she is
still alive, must now be a woman of twenty-three, Rachel M., since
deceased, who was a year younger than the above, and Trevor W., an
imbecile, aged eighteen. These persons were at the period of the story
inhab