s, for he never took his stony eye off me all the while. Unable
to move, and bathed in a profuse perspiration, I must have died in
another instant from sheer agony and terror, had I not by a supernatural
effort gathered up my last dying energies, and burst out in a loud,
despairing yell that seemed to pierce the walls of the whole house. I
felt the spell broken for the time. The fiend himself seemed startled by
the sudden and preternatural shrillness of the scream, and for a moment
changed the expression of his countenance. Feeling his eye no longer
fixed upon mine with that fearful intensity, I dared to breathe again;
but I had awoke Mrs. Wharton in the next room, and she knocked at my
door to ask me what was the matter.

"Nothing, thank you," I said; "only a dream; don't be alarmed."

So Mrs. Wharton retired to her room again.

The monster who had never left me during all this time, at length spoke.

"I have summoned you here to-night, because I have need of you. I am
that Baron Ralph, the ruthless, whose deeds of bloodshed you have
already heard of, and for which deeds he is condemned nightly to inhabit
the form of a flea. You have experienced my power, and your paltry
scepticism has been shaken. Listen now to me. I do not always inhabit
the contemptible form in which you first saw me. In the daytime I wander
to and fro on the earth, and inhabit by turns the bodies of such men
whose natural propensities are in harmony with my own. Wretch! do you
know that the man, who, through your inability to save, was executed
for some few paltry murders, was none other than myself in the flesh?
That it was _my_ body that suffered the pain and disgrace of execution,
_my_ spirit that was driven back by your incapacity, to inhabit the form
of one of the vilest of insects? Think not to escape my resentment. I
have need of you again, it is true, but I do not ask you a favour, I
command you to obey. Spirits of my order do not ask; they command and
threaten, and if disobeyed, punish."

Aware of the awful power of this fell being and knowing all resistance
vain, I thought it best to assume as humble a position as I could, in
order to milden the severity of his look and manner--that fearful look
that I had experienced only a few minutes ago, and which might kill me
outright a second time. Therefore I prostrated myself before him on the
bed, and in the most abject tones began.

"Illustrious flea! I will do all----"

"Irreverent varl