ed. She was still thinking of this, when a
girl came to light her to bed.

It was a great gloomy house, which the flaring candles seemed to make
yet more gloomy, and the child did not feel comfortable when she was
left alone. She could not help thinking of the figure stealing through
the passage downstairs. At last a broken and fitful sleep stole upon
her. A deeper slumber followed this--and then--What! That figure in the
room! A figure was there, it crouched and slunk along, stealing round
the bed. She had no voice to cry for help, no power to move,--on it
came--silently and stealthily to the bed's head. There it remained,
motionless as she. At length, it busied its hands in something, and she
heard the chink of money. Then it dropped upon its hands and knees, and
crawled away. It reached the door at last, the steps creaked beneath its
noiseless tread, and it was gone.

The first impulse of the child was not to be alone--and with no
consciousness of having moved, she gained the door. Once in her
grandfather's room, she would be safe. An idea flashed suddenly upon
her--what if the figure should enter there, and have a design upon the
old man's life? She turned faint and sick. She saw it creeping in front
of her. It went in. Not knowing what she meant to do, but meaning to
preserve him, or be killed herself, she staggered forward and looked in.

What sight was that which met her view?

The bed was smooth and empty. And at a table sat the old man
himself--the only living creature there--his white face pinched and
sharpened by the greediness which made his eyes unnaturally
bright--counting the money of which his hands had robbed her.

With steps more unsteady than those with which she had approached the
room, the child groped her way back into her own chamber. The terror
which she had lately felt was nothing compared with that which now
oppressed her. The grey-haired old man, gliding like a ghost into her
room, and acting the thief, while he supposed her fast asleep, then
bearing off his prize, and hanging over it with the ghastly exultation
she had witnessed, was far more dreadful than anything her wildest fancy
could have suggested. The feeling which beset her was one of uncertain
horror. She had no fear of the dear old grandfather, but the man she had
seen that night seemed like another creature in his shape. She could
scarcely connect her own affectionate companion, save by his loss, with
this old man, so like yet