or the few labourers who strayed into the
tap-room, which could, in the slightest
degree, excite the very small and very dull
imaginative faculty which Isaac Scatchard
possessed.

At a little after eleven the house was
closed. Isaac went round with the landlord
and held the candle while the doors and
lower-windows were being secured. He
noticed with surprise the strength of the
bolts, bars, and iron-sheathed shutters.

"You see, we are rather lonely here," said
the landlord. " We never have had any at
tempts made to break in yet, but it's always
as well to be on the safe side. When nobody
is sleeping here, I am the only man in the
house. My wife and daughter are timid, and
the servant-girl takes after her missusses.
Another glass of ale, before you turn in?
No!—Well, how such a sober man as you
comes to be out of place is more than I can
make out, for one. Here's where you're to
sleep. You're our only lodger to-night, and I
think you'll say my missus has done her best
to make you comfortable. You're quite sure
you won't have another glass of ale?—Very
well. Good night."

It was half-past eleven by the clock in the
passage as they went up-stairs to the bed-
room, the window of which looked on to the
wood at the back of the house. Isaac locked the
door, set his candle on the chest of drawers,
and wearily got ready for bed. The bleak
autumn wind was still blowing, and the
solemn, monotonous, surging moan of it in
the wood was dreary and awful to hear
through the night-silence. Isaac felt strangely
wakeful, and resolved, as he lay down in bed,
to keep the candle a-light until he began to
grow sleepy; for there was something unen
durably depressing in the bare idea of lying
awake in the darkness, listening to the
dismal, ceaseless moaning of the wind in
the wood.

Sleep stole on him before he was aware of
it. His eyes closed, and he fell off insensibly
to rest, without having so much.as thought of
extinguishing the candle.

The first sensation of which he was conscious
after sinking into slumber, was a strange
shivering that ran through him suddenly
from head to foot, and a dreadful sinking
pain at the heart, such as he had never felt
before. The shivering only disturbed his
slumbers—the pain woke him instantly. In
one moment he passed from a state of sleep
to a state of wakefulness his eyes wide open
—his mental perceptions cleared on a sudden
as if by a miracle.

The caudle had burnt down nearly to the
last morsel of tallow; but the top of the
unsnuffed wick had just fallen off, and the light
in the little room was, for the moment, fair
and full. Between the foot of his bed and
the closed door there stood a woman with a
knife in her hand, looking at him. He was
stricken speechless with terror, but he did not
lose the preternatural clearness of his faculties;
and he never took his eyes off the
woman. She said not one word as they
stared each other in the face; but she began
to move slowly towards the left-hand side of
the bed.

His eyes followed her. She was a fair,
fine woman, with yellowish flaxen hair, and
light grey eyes, with a droop in the left eye-
lid. He noticed those things and fixed them
on his mind, before she was round at the side
of the bed. Speechless, with no expression in
her face, with no noise following her footfall,
—she came closer and closer—stopped—and
slowly raised the knife. He laid his right
arm over his throat to save it; but, as he
saw the knife coming down, threw his hand
across the bed to the right side, and jerked
his body over that way, just as the knife
descended on the mattress within an inch of his
shoulder.

His eyes fixed on her arm and hand, as she
slowly drew the knife out of the bed. A
white, well-shaped arm, with a pretty down
lying lightly over the fair skin. A delicate,
lady's hand, with the crowning beauty of a
pink flush under and round the finger-nails.

She drew the knife out, and passed back
again slowly to the foot of the bed; stopped
there for a moment looking at him; then
came on—still speechless, still with no
expression on the blank, beautiful face, still
with no sound following the stealthy footfalls
—came on to the right side of the bed where
he now lay. As she approached, she raised
the knife again, and he drew himself away to
the left side. She struck, as before, right into
the mattress, with a deliberate, perpendicularly-
downward action of the arm. This
time his eyes wandered from her to the
knife. It was like the large clasp knives
which he had often seen labouring men use
to cut their bread and bacon with. Her
delicate little fingers did not conceal more
than two thirds of the handle; he noticed
that it was made of buck-horn, clean and
shining as the blade was, and looking like
new.

For the second time she drew the knife
out, concealed it in the wide sleeve of her
gown, then stopped by the bedside, watching
him. For an instant he saw her standing in
that position—then the wick of the spent
candle fell over into the socket. The flame
diminished to a little blue point, and the room
grew dark. A moment, or less, if possible,
passed so—and then the wick flamed up,
smokily, for the last time. His eyes were still
looking eagerly over the right-hand side of
the bed when the final flash of light came,
but they discerned nothing. The fair woman
with the knife was gone.

The conviction that he was alone again,
weakened the hold of the terror that had
struck him dumb up to this time. The
preternatural sharpness which the very intensity
of his panic had mysteriously imparted