on floor and carpet.
The lurid glow of his smouldering torch imperfectly lights his figure and
face, and, except when much perturbed, his link never blazes. On those
occasions, however, as he goes his rounds, he ever and anon whirls it
around his head, and it bursts into a dismal flame. This is a fearful omen,
and always portends some direful crisis or calamity. It occurs, only once
or twice in a century.

I don't know whether Madame had heard anything of these phenomena; but she
did report which very much frightened me and Mary Quince. She asked us who
walked in the gallery on which her bed-room opened, making a rustling with
her dress, and going down the stairs, and breathing long breaths here and
there. Twice, she said, she had stood at her door in the dark, listening to
these sounds, and once she called to know who it was. There was no answer,
but the person plainly turned back, and hurried towards her with an
unnatural speed, which made her jump within her door and shut it.

When first such tales are told, they excite the nerves of the young and the
ignorant intensely. But the special effect, I have found, soon wears out
The tale simply takes it's place with the rest. It was with Madame's
narrative.

About a week after its relation, I had my experience of a similar sort.
Mary Quince went down-stairs for a night-light, leaving me in bed, a candle
burning in the room, and being tired. I fell asleep before her return.
When I awoke the candle had been extinguished. But I heard a step softly
approaching. I jumped up--quite forgetting the ghost, and thinking only of
Mary Quince--and opened the door, expecting to see the light of her candle.
Instead, all was dark, and near me I heard the fall of a bare foot on the
oak floor. It was as if some one had stumbled. I said, 'Mary,' but no
answer came, only a rustling of clothes and a breathing at the other side
of the gallery, which passed off towards the upper staircase. I turned into
my room, freezing with horror, and clapt my door. The noise wakened Mary
Quince, who had returned and gone to her bed half an hour before.

About a fortnight after this, Mary Quince, a very veracious spinster,
reported to me, that having got up to fix the window, which was rattling,
at about four o'clock in the morning, she saw a light shining from the
library window. She could swear to its being a strong light, streaming
through the chinks of the shutter, and moving. No doubt the link was wave