sant or
stormy, Keene walked from the cars to his office. His lunch, and sometimes
his dinner, consisted of fruit bought from a basket.

Around him were scores of men reduced to a similar pass, and most of them
lost courage and drifted down and out. Courage was the only thing Keene
did not lose. He hung on tight, and his former experience enabled him
slowly to recover the position he had lost. Little by little, he got on to
his feet, and when once he had wiped out his debts he began the fight
again on a big scale, and has managed to make himself one of the richest
men in the country.

The Tapestried Chamber.

BY SIR WALTER SCOTT.

This tale by Sir Walter Scott is justly reckoned among the
most effective ghost stories ever written. Its art lies in
its perfect simplicity, which for the moment convinces the
reader of its truth and therefore makes the horror of it
intensely real. Scott had himself a strain of superstition
in his nature, derived in part from his Scottish ancestry
and heightened by the strange stories and gruesome legends
which had been told him by the peasants around whose fires
he had sat at night while still a boy.

His belief in the supernatural appears and reappears in many
of his most famous novels, as in the episode of the _Gray
Specter_ in "Waverley," the second-sight of _Meg Merrilies_
in "Guy Mannering," and the weird figure of _Norna of the
Fitful Head_ in "The Pirate." But no better example can be
found of Scott's command of the mysterious as an element in
fiction than this short story of "The Tapestried Chamber."

The following narrative is given from the pen, so far as memory permits,
in the same character in which it was presented to the author's ear; nor
has he claim to further praise, or to be more deeply censured, than in
proportion to the good or bad judgment which he has employed in selecting
his materials, as he has studiously avoided any attempt at ornament which
might interfere with the simplicity of the tale.

At the same time it must be admitted that the particular class of stories
which turns on the marvelous, possesses a stronger influence when told
than when committed to print. The volume taken up at noonday, though
rehearsing the same incidents, conveys a much more feeble impression than
is achieved by the voice of the speaker on a circle of fireside auditors,
who hang upon the narrative as the narrat