sure, due
to any actual fall in the temperature of the room, ran through me, and
my teeth chattered. As on the previous occasion, however, my senses were
abnormally alive, and as I watched--instinct guiding my eyes to the
ebony chair--I heard a creak, and the sound of Something breathing. The
antagonistic Presence was once again there. I essayed to speak, to
repeat the form of address I had constantly rehearsed, to say and do
something that would tempt the unknown into some form of communication.
I could do nothing. I was lip-bound, powerless to move; and then from
out of the superphysical darkness there gleamed the eyes, lidless,
lurid, bestial. A shape was there, too: a shape which, although still
vague, dreadfully so, was nevertheless more pronounced than on the
former occasion, and I felt that it only needed time, time and an
enforced, an involuntary amount of scrutiny on my part, to see that
shape materialise into something satanical and definite.

"I waited--I was obliged to wait--when, even as before--Heaven be
praised!--the arrival of the gallant waits, (I say, gallant, for the
night had fast become a white inferno) loosened my fetters, and as I
sprang towards the chair, the eyes vanished.

"I then got into bed and slept heavily till the morning.

"To their great disappointment, the clamorous breakfasters learned
nothing--I kept the adventure rigidly to myself, and that night,
Christmas night, found me, for the third time, listening for the sounds
from the mysterious, the hideously, hellishly mysterious, high-backed,
ebony chair.

"There had been a severe storm during the day, and the wind had howled
with cyclonic force around the house; but there was silence now, an
almost preternatural silence; and the lawn, lavishly bestrewn with huge
heaps of driven snow, and broken, twisted branches, presented the
appearance of a titanic battlefield. In marked contrast to the disturbed
condition of the ground, the sky was singularly serene, and broad beams
of phosphorescent light poured in through the diamond window-panes on to
the bed, in which I was sitting, bolt upright.

"One o'clock struck, and ere the hollow-sounding vibrations had ceased,
the vague form once again appeared behind the chair, and the malignant,
evil eyes met mine in a diabolical stare; whilst, as before, on trying
to speak or move, I found myself tongue-tied and paralysed. As the
moments slowly glided away, the shape of the Thing became more and m