orders were so, in that excellent hotel), the
door opened, and One old man stood there.

He did not come in, but stood with the
door in his hand.

"One of the six, Tom, at last!" said Mr.
Goodchild, in a surprised whisper.— "Sir,
your pleasure?"

"Sir, your pleasure?" said the One old
man.

"I didn't ring."

"The Bell did," said the One old man.

He said BELL, in a deep strong way, that
would have expressed the church Bell.

"I had the pleasure, I believe, of seeing
you, yesterday?" said Goodchild.

"I cannot undertake to say for certain,"
was the grim reply of the One old man.

"I think you saw me? Did you not?"

"Saw you?" said the old man. "O yes,
I saw you. But, I see many who never see
me."

A chilled, slow, earthy, fixed old man.
A cadaverous old man of measured speech.
An old man who seemed as unable to wink,
as if his eyelids had been nailed to his
forehead. An old man whose eyes— two
spots of fire—had no more motion than if
they had been connected with the back of his
skull by screws driven through it, and
rivetted and bolted outside, among his grey
hair.

The night had turned so cold, to Mr.
Goodchild's sensations, that he shivered. He
remarked lightly, and half apologetically, "I
think somebody is walking over my grave."

"No," said the weird old man, "there is no
one there."

Mr. Goodchild looked at Idle, but Idle lay
with his head enwreathed in smoke.

"No one there?" said Goodchild.

"There is no one at your grave, I assure
you," said the old man.

He had come in and shut the door, and he
now sat down. He did not bend himself to
sit, as other people do, but seemed to sink
bolt upright, as if in water, until the chair
stopped him.

"My friend, Mr. Idle," said Goodchild,
extremely anxious to introduce a third
person into the conversation.

"I am," said the old man, without looking
at him," at Mr. Idle's service."

"If you are an old inhabitant of this place,"
Francis Goodchild resumed:

"Yes."

—"Perhaps you can decide a point my
friend and I were in doubt upon, this morning.
They hang condemned criminals at the
Castle, I believe?"

"I believe so," said the old man.

"Are their faces turned towards that
noble prospect?"

"Your face is turned," replied the old man,
"to the Castle wall. When you are tied up,
you see its stones expanding and contracting
violently, and a similar expansion and
contraction seem to take place in your own head
and breast. Then, there is a rush of fire and
an earthquake, and the Castle springs into
the air, and you tumble down a precipice."

His cravat appeared to trouble him. He
put his hand to his throat, and moved his
neck from side to side. He was an old man
of a swollen character of face, and his nose
was immoveably hitched up on one side, as if
by a little hook inserted in that nostril. Mr.
Goodchild felt exceedingly uncomfortable,
and began to think the night was hot, and
not cold.

"A strong description, sir," he observed.

"A strong sensation," the old man
rejoined.

Again, Mr. Goodchild looked to Mr.
Thomas Idle; but, Thomas lay on his back
with his face attentively turned towards the
One old man, and made no sign. At this
time Mr. Goodchild believed that he saw two
threads of fire stretch from the old man's eyes
to his own, and there attach themselves. (Mr.
Goodchild writes the present account of his
experience, and, with the utmost solemnity,
protests that he had the strongest sensation
upon him of being forced to look at the old
man along those two fiery films, from that
moment.)

"I must tell it to you," said the old man,
with a ghastly and a stony stare.

"What?" asked Francis Goodchild.

"You know where it took place. Yonder!"

Whether he pointed to the room above, or
to the room below, or to any room in that
old house, or to a room in some other old house
in that old town, Mr. Goodchild was not, nor
is, nor ever can be, sure. He was confused by
the circumstance that the right fore-finger of
the One old man seemed to dip itself in one
of the threads of fire, light itself, and make a
fiery start in the air, as it pointed somewhere.
Having pointed somewhere, it went
out.

"You know she was a Bride," said the old
man.

"I know they still send up Bride-cake,"
Mr. Goodchild faltered. "This is a very
oppressive air."

"She was a Bride," said the old man.
"She was a fair, flaxen-haired, large-eyed
girl, who had no character, no purpose.
A weak, credulous, incapable, helpless
nothing. Not like her mother. No, no. It
was her father whose character she reflected.

"Her mother had taken care to secure
everything to herself, for her own life, when,
the father of this girl (a child at that time)
died—of sheer helplessness; no other
disorder—and then He renewed the acquaintance
that had once subsisted between the
mother and Him. He had been put aside for
the flaxen-haired, large-eyed man (or non-
entity) with Money. He could overlook that
for Money. He wanted compensation in
Money.

"So, he returned to the side of that woman
the mother, made love to her again, danced