WYLDER'S HAJVD.
67
Then I heard two o'clock strike; but shortly after, as I
suppose, sleep overtook me, and I have no distinct idea for
how long my slumber lasted. The fire was very low when
I awoke, and saw a figure — and a very odd one — seated
by the embers, and stooping over the grate, with a pair
of long hands expanded, as it seemed, to catch the warmth
of the sinking fire.
It was that of a very tall old man, entirely dressed in
white flannel — a very long spencer, and some sort of
white swathing about his head. His back was toward me;
and he stooped without the slightest motion over the fire-
place, in the attitude I have described.
As I looked, he suddenly turned toward me, and fixed
upon me a cold, and as it seemed, a wrathful gaze, over his
shoulder. It was a bleached and a long-chinned face — the
countenance of Lome's portrait — only more faded, sin-
ister, and apathetic. And having, as it were, secured its
awful command over me by a protracted gaze, he rose,
supernaturally lean and tall, and drew near the side of my
bed.
I continued to stare upon this apparition with the most
dreadful fascination I ever experienced in my life. For
two or three seconds I literally could not move. When I
did, I am not ashamed to confess, it was to plunge my head
under the bed-clothes, with the childish instinct of terror;
and there I lay breathless, for what seemed to me not far
from ten minutes, during which there was no sound, nor
other symptom of its presence.
On a sudden the bed-clothes were gently lifted at my
feet, and I sprang backwards, sitting upright against the
back of the bed, and once more under the gaze of that
long-chinned old man.
A voice, as peculiar as the appearance of the figure,
said:—