with fright and terror. He held the candle
in his hand.

"O!" he said, "pour l'amour de Dieu,
don't leave me! Help me—aid me—stay
with me!"

I rubbed my eyes. The candle was shaking
in his hand, and bringing out his ghastly face
with strange, Rembrantish effects. "What
is it, in Heaven's name?" I said. And
curiously enough, what struck me more than
anything about him, was a great rent down
the front of his shirt.

"O, such a night! I would not stay by
myself in that room for another instant—no,
not for the wealth of a prince!"

"What is it?" I asked. "What has
disturbed you?" (How did he come by that
rent?)

"Such a terrible thing! It was enough
to make one die on the spot! Ah," he went
on, wiping away the drops from his forehead,
"I knew something of the sort would come
of this business! But I was not so bad as
the rest!"

"What do you speak of?" I said again,
impatiently. "Why have you disturbed
me?"

"I thought I was above such womanish
terrors. But to see him come in, and glide
past me, just as I had seen him only a few
hours before—him whom we thought was—"
He stopped suddenly, and, seeing there was
no explanation to be got from him, I threw
myself back wearily.

Here I heard the flapping of the cock's
wings, and presently my bell-ringer roars out
two o'clock.

"Two o'clock!"   continued this strange
visitor. "I will go down and fetch out my
horse, and go my way. The open road, the
darkness, anything but that horrid spectre!"
With that, I saw him thrust on his
garments hurriedly, and leave the room. He
left the candle behind him, burning on the
table.

No more rest for me that night or morning.
The sweet weariness was gone from
my eyelids, utterly routed. Nightmare, or
drunkenness, must have been on him. The
hound! Could he not have slept off his
debauch elsewhere? Now, on those dark
roads and with an unsteady hand on the
bridle, he will most likely come tumbling head
foremost over his horse's neck, and be found
in the morning on the hard stones, quite
stiff and stark! Well, on his own head be it.

Whir-r-r! went the flapping wings of the
cock. It was one quarter past two.

The candle was burning with a dull yellow
light, on a little buhl table with twisted
legs, not a yard from the tapestry. Thus it
broke up the walls into great patches of
black, sprinkling little driblets of yellow
light here and there on points projecting. A
faint glimmer reached even as far as the
next room, to the cock on the chimney-piece.

Click! click! click! Why, what could
that sound signify? Clock running down?
No; rather winding up—positive winding of
a clock— click! click! in the regular fashion
— click! click again! Why this was to be a
night of wonders and mysterious——- Bah!
my brains are astray. These complicated
wheels must be busy inside. And, yet, it is
like winding—very like. Two quarters past
two now, by the flapping of the cock's wings,

The clock was now suddenly shut out from
view by something that had stolen in between
me and it! Something bending over the
yellow light—a face—a figure close by the
buhl table! A figure quite still and motionless
—dark and solemn—and the face? Why,
heavens! it was the poor canon's gentle face
returned to us again. So gentle, so sweet,
so benign, so angelic, bent over the yellow
light; yet with a strange melancholy over it.
I called to him in a low voice: "You have
been a long way, Canon Dupin, and we have
waited for you, but you have come at last."
The gentle face moved round slowly, and
looked full at me, but did not speak; that is
moved into the shadow, but I knew it was
looking towards me.  "You must be weary?"
I went on—a curious feeling was creeping
over me—"you must be weary with this
long night-ramble—very weary?" Was it a
light echo that seemed to repeat after me,
"Very, very weary?"

"Where have you been wandering all this
long night? Have you been sleeping?"

The face was now bending over the yellow
light; but the eyes—the gentle eyes—were
turned upward. Again, was it a sighing
echo that seemed to whisper the words,
"Sleeping behind the fountain—behind the
fountain?"

A sense of something terrible began to
weigh upon my heart. I got up suddenly,
went to the window, and threw the shutters
wide open. It was daylight; fresh and
clear; it poured into the room like a flood.
Then I looked to the candle, flaring wretchedly
and sicklily in that pure healthy light .
No one in the room but myself. Whirr-r, flapping!
Three o'clock by the canon's clock.

At breakfast next morning—a fine,
sunny, inspiring morning, too—out under
Monsieur Bontiquet's vines, at a dainty little
table covered with wines and dainty fruits
—I asked for Monsieur Bontiquet; I was
told he had gone to the post-town early, had
returned, and had gone away again.

"The truth is, Monsieur," said the person
who officiated, "he is troubled in his mind on
the score of the poor canon. He was not
heard of at the town where we fancied
he had passed the night."

"Passed the night?" I said. "Why, was he
not here?"

"Here is Monsieur Bontiquet himself,"
said the youth.

And as he spoke, I saw Bontiquet
dismounting from a horse at the door.