narrative, and of which the mouldering doors stood
wide open. I followed the Shadow into the
pavilion, up the crazy stair to the room above,
with its four great blank, unglazed windows, or
rather arcades, north, south, east, and west. I
halted on the middle of the floor: Right before
my eyes, through the vista made by breathless
boughs, stood out from the moonlit air the dreary
mausoleum. Then, at the command conveyed to
me, I placed the candle on a wooden settle,
touched a spring in the handle of the staff, a lid
flew back, and I drew from the hollow, first a
lump of some dark bituminous substance, next a
small slender wand of polished steel, of which
the point was tipped with a translucent material
which appeared to me like crystal. Bending
down, still obedient to the direction conveyed
to me, I described on the floor with the lump
of bitumen (if I may so call it) the figure
of the pentacle with the interlaced triangles,
in a circle nine feet in diameter, just as I
had drawn it for Margrave the evening before.
The material used made the figure perceptible,
in a dark colour of mingled black and red. I
applied the flame of the candle to the circle, and
immediately it became lambent with a low steady
splendour that rose about an inch from the floor,
and gradually from this light there emanated a
soft grey transparent mist and a faint but exquisite
odour. I stood in the midst of the circle,
and within the circle also, close by my side, stood
the Scin-Læca; no longer reflected on the wall,
but apart from it, erect, rounded into more integral
and distinct form, yet impalpable, and from it
there breathed an icy air. Then lifting the wand
the broader end of which rested in the palm of
my hand, the two fore-fingers closing lightly over
it in a line parallel with the point, I directed it
towards the wide aperture before me, fronting
the mausoleum. I repeated aloud some words
whispered to me in a language I knew not: those
words I would not trace on this paper could I
remember them. As they came to a close, I
heard a howl from the watch-dog in the yard—a
dismal, lugubrious howl. Other dogs in the
distant village caught up the sound, and bayed in a
dirge-like chorus; and the howling went on
louder and louder. Again strange words were
whispered to me, and I repeated them in mechanical
submission; and when they, too, were
ended, I felt the ground tremble beneath me,
and as my eyes looked straight forward down the
vista, that, stretching from the casement, was
bounded by the solitary mausoleum, vague formless
shadows seemed to pass across the moonlight
—below, along the sward—above, in the air;
and then suddenly a terror, not before conceived,
came upon me.

And a third time words were whispered; but
though I knew no more of their meaning than I
did of those that had preceded them, I felt a
repuguance to utter them aloud. Mutely I turned
towards the Scin-Læca, and the expression of its
face was menacing and terrible; my will became
yet more compelled to the control imposed upon
it, and my lips commenced the formula again
whispered into my ear, when I heard distinctly a
voice of warning and of anguish, that murmured
"Hold!" I knew the voice; it was Lilian's. I
paused—I turned towards the quarter from which
the voice had come, and in the space afar I
saw the features, the form of Lilian. Her arms
were stretched towards me in supplication, her
countenance was deadly pale and anxious
with unutterable distress. The whole image
seemed in unison with the voice;—the look,
the attitude, the gesture, of one who sees another
in deadly peril, and cries "Beware!"

This apparition vanished in a moment; but
that moment sufficed to free my mind from the
constraint which had before enslaved it. I
dashed the wand to the ground, sprang from the
circle, rushed from the place. How I got into
my own room I can remember not—I know not;
I have a vague reminiscence of some intervening
wanderings, of giant trees, of shroud-like
moonlight, of the Shining Shadow and its angry
aspect, of the blind walls and iron door of the
House of the Dead, of spectral images a
confused and dreary phantasmagoria. But all I can
recal with distinctness is the sight of my own
hueless face in the mirror in my own still room,
by the light of the white moon through the
window; and sinking down, I said to myself,
"This at least, is, an hallucination or a dream!"

CHAPTER LII.

A HEAVY sleep came over me at daybreak, but
I did not undress nor go to bed. The sun was
high in the heavens when, on waking, I saw the
servant, who had attended me, bustling about
the room.

"I beg your pardon, sir, I am afraid I
disturbed you; but I have been three times to see
if you were not coming down, and found you so
soundly asleep I did not like to wake you. Mr.
Strahan has finished breakfast, and gone out
riding; Mr. Margrave has left—left before six
o'clock."

"Ah, he said he was going early."

"Yes, sir; and he seemed so cross when he
went. I could never have supposed so pleasant
a gentleman could put himself into such a
passion!"

"What was the matter?"

"Why, his walking-stick could not be found;
it was not in the hall. He said he had left it in
the study; we could not find it there. At last
he found it himself in the old summer-house, and
said—I beg pardon, he said— 'he was sure you
had taken it there: that some one, at all events,
had been meddling with it.' However, I am
very glad it was found, since he seems to set such
store on it."

"Did Mr. Margrave go himself into the
summer-house to look for it?"

"Yes, sir; no one else would have thought of
such a place; no one likes to go there even in
the day-time."

"Why?"