s seriously set about endeavouring,
if we can, to account for what has happened in this house."

"I--I cannot now."

"Nay, let us examine the matter; if we can find any natural explanation,
let us cling to it, Henry, as the sheet-anchor of our very souls."

"Do you think. You are fertile in expedients. Do you think, Marchdale;
and, for Heaven's sake, and for the sake of our own peace, find out some
other way of accounting for what has happened, than the hideous one you
have suggested."

"And yet my pistol bullets hurt him not; he has left the tokens of his
presence on the neck of Flora."

"Peace, oh! peace. Do not, I pray you, accumulate reasons why I should
receive such a dismal, awful superstition. Oh, do not, Marchdale, as you
love me!"

"You know that my attachment to you," said Marchdale, "is sincere; and
yet, Heaven help us!"

His voice was broken by grief as he spoke, and he turned aside his head
to hide the bursting tears that would, despite all his efforts, show
themselves in his eyes.

"Marchdale," added Henry, after a pause of some moments' duration, "I
will sit up to-night with my sister."

"Do--do!"

"Think you there is a chance it may come again?"

"I cannot--I dare not speculate upon the coming of so dreadful a
visitor, Henry; but I will hold watch with you most willingly."

"You will, Marchdale?"

"My hand upon it. Come what dangers may, I will share them with you,
Henry."

"A thousand thanks. Say nothing, then, to George of what we have been
talking about. He is of a highly susceptible nature, and the very idea
of such a thing would kill him."

"I will; be mute. Remove your sister to some other chamber, let me beg
of you, Henry; the one she now inhabits will always be suggestive of
horrible thoughts."

"I will; and that dreadful-looking portrait, with its perfect likeness
to him who came last night."

"Perfect indeed. Do you intend to remove it?"

"I do not. I thought of doing so; but it is actually on the panel in the
wall, and I would not willingly destroy it, and it may as well remain
where it is in that chamber, which I can readily now believe will become
henceforward a deserted one in this house."

"It may well become such."

"Who comes here? I hear a step."

There was a tip at the door at this moment, and George made his
appearance in answer to the summons to come in. He looked pale and ill;
his face betrayed how much he had mentally suffered during that night,
and al