hard-featured, mean-spirited, and thoroughly selfish wretch, with more intellect than feeling, and not too much of either. It was strange that I should so thoroughly, and yet so briefly, have knowledge of all his past life, all his petty meannesses, his lusts, his sordid selfishness. It was passing strange that I should become so incorporated into the very essence of his soul that I discerned even the minute gradations by which he changed from an innocent child to the evil thing I saw him. It will be fearful if, at the Day of Judgment, men's souls shall be so laid bare to the souls of other men!

This old man, in my dream, had saved and scraped together money, little by little, till at length his sole labor was to increase by usury and careful speculation the wealth he had amassed. He had a certain pride, too, and he built this gaunt, brick house and buried himself in it - buried himself with an ancient house-keeper as miserly as himself. From day to day this pair vegetated, unwholesome human fungi, dry and useless excrescences on life.

Vegetated thus, till there came one day a letter, edged with black, informing the miser that a very wealthy kinsman, dying a widower, had designated him as guardian to his only child and heiress. Thus it came that a dark-haired beauty glided, calm and self-possessed, into the mazes of my dream. She was haughty, and of a commanding presence, with large hands and feet, great length of limb, and an imperial bust. Fond of dress, of rich food, and, I fear, of wine. Not particularly given to lovers, too self-reliant and too proud for that.

They were an odd family, and it will seem strange to you that she should have desired to remain under her guardian's roof during even the few months that were wanting to her majority. It was not strange to me, though, who saw the pleasure she took in making the old man cringe before her haughtiness, and in humbling the pride of the ancient house-keeper.

I saw in my dream all the ward's scorn for the guardian; all the guardian's *hatred of the ward. I saw, also, the glitter of his wicked eyes when her lovely arms wore bracelets heavier than common, or jewels of rare brilliancy flashed in her hair or heaved upon her bosom. As for the house-keeper, she loved and hated with her master. It was a pleasant household during those few months a lovely household and cheerful to contemplate! So much so, that in the contemplation — with all the varying emotions of its members laid bare before me- I grew quite weary, and longed to recover the individuality I seemed to have strangely lost.

The months glided swiftly on, and the time for her final departure drew nigh. As it came nearer, I saw that the old man's eyes glittered more and more as he gazed at her, and that within his soul a dark and terrible purpose was beginning to be formed. I followed its growth, day by day, as in the French models one follows the chick, as, change after change, it progresses during incubation from the formless germ to the young bird that finally chips the shell. Thus there was growing in the miser's soul a dreadful form of evil. It took no step backward, but ever increased in outline and strength, until it grew ready for the hatching.

Presently the day came preceding that fixed upon for her departure. There was a strange and unusual gayety upon her that day. She laughed and sang

bits of songs as she tramped about the house. She had the step of a grenadier, this full-blown beauty, and never tripped daintily as slighter and more fairylike women do.

As for the miser, he was a smouldering passion all the day. The chick in his breast was pecking at the shell, vigorous and ripe for the hatching. And the house-keeper, with a strange intuition of her master's purpose, hovered near him all day long, her face working with an agitation she strove in vain to control, and her nerves strung to the highest pitch of human endurance. So the day passed. At dinner, and at the supper-table the heiress was in the fullest flow of spirits. She took a whim, too, to wear some of her most brilliant ornaments on this last day, and the rings on her fingers, the pendants in her ears, the broach upon her bosom, shone with more than usual lustre. Fastened artfully in her hair, so that they only here and there peeped out from among the dark braids, was a string of large and perfect pearls. At all these things, and at the lovely woman who adorned them, the miser gazed with evil in his eyes, and the house-keeper silently nerved herself for what was to come. So the day passed, and at night the maiden stood within her chamber completing her preparations for the morrow's journey. On the toilet-table beside her reposed the silver-bound casket in which she kept her jewelry. What she had worn that day lay with the rest, save only the pearls which still swam in the waves of her dark hair.

Thus far I dreamed, when a terrible night-mare took possession of me. I fancied two figures creeping through the night. From his chamber in the garret crawled the miser in stocking-footed stillness. He carried no light, but in one hand gleamed a long and cruel knife. From the cellar, where she had all the evening crouched like a venomous reptile, came the house-keeper. Beneath her apron she held fast to some heavy object. I knew that the steps of both were bent toward the chamber of the beautiful and unconscious girl.

My personal identity was now so far restored that I longed to fly to her and warn her of the danger, but I was bound by the horrible bonds of night-mare, and could stir neither hand nor foot. I felt, now, that this was all a dream, yet the cruel agony of witnessing that murderous approach upon innocence and beauty, without the power to avert the coming blow, drove me nearly frantic. I strained and tugged at the bonds of the demon who held me, and at length, with a cry that must have sounded far beyond the house, I awoke!

The damp, gray dawn was peering in at the windows. Dimly and halfawake-as I lay for a second or two motionless on my bed, the fearful passages of my last night's dream still fresh in my aching brain- I gazed with an unquiet apprehension about the chamber, half-expecting to see the tall and voluptuous beauty disrobing before the mirror. Then I remembered it was only a dream, and blessed GOD that it was so.

These emotions passed rapidly away, and I was soon aware of quick footsteps hurrying toward my chamber. Arising hastily, I slipped on my pantaloons and hastened to the door. My sister Alice stood there, her face very white and her hands crossed flutteringly on her bosom.

'Oh! what a shriek!' whispered she. 'Did you hear it, Henry? It

sounded so fearfully through the house. Oh! I know it 's haunted! sure it's haunted!'

I am

'It was only I,' I said; 'I was troubled with an awful dream, and in breaking from it I cried out!'

'Oh! dear,' the poor girl whimpered, 'I am so afraid to stay here, I am indeed! It is so lonely and so gloomy. Hear how it rains; I don't believe the sun ever shines here. Listen! what is that?'

'Nothing,' I said; 'I hear nothing.'

'Ah! well, but I heard it in the night. I lay awake and I heard something creeping, and creeping down the stair-way from the garret I know I did! And then I felt that it was passing my door toward your chamber, and then came that horrid scream!'

What could I say but that the poor child, rendered nervous by her late griefs, was grown full of woman's fancies? What could I say but that it was nothing? This I said, but still Alice was not convinced. She was certain she had heard something, and that was sufficient to drive her half-crazy for the day.

After an early breakfast, for no one thought of sleep again that day, Bridget favored us with a lengthy address, on the subject of a banshee hereditary in her family. She concluded by stating that she was a poor orphan, with an old mother in Ireland, and that she could n't think of bringing trouble upon us along with the family ghost. After which she brought her trunk down to the lower hall and departed for the village.

I believed no more in ghosts before I entered that house than I did in a personal and substantial Devil, going up and down the world like a roaring lion; but this testimony, in addition to my strange dream, somewhat staggered me, and I caught myself repeating: 'What if the place is haunted!'

It made me nervous and unstable for a time; I could neither read, write, think nor converse. Bridget's sudden departure, entirely aside from our housekeeping and domestic arrangements, rendered the loneliness of the place yet more appalling.

Outside, the rain still fell with a heavy slant against the windows, and the sky was of the color of lead; within, the great fires still waged an unequal combat with the dampness and desolation of the rooms. Unable to bear up against the dreary influences of the scene, my sister Alice at length sat down in mute despair and gave herself up to a fit of silent weeping.

Fortunately, just when our spirits were at the lowest, a lumbering stagecoach drove up to the door, and my kind-hearted aunt Cherrystone clambered heavily out. Here was really and truly an acquisition. She had come, she said, to help set things to rights at our commencement at house-keeping, and she meant to stay with us a week, at least. That we were glad to see her, I need not say, and we quickly made her as comfortable as circumstances would permit.

She was a companionable and lively person usually, but even on her the blight of this cursed house seemed to fall as she crossed its threshold. Even

her elasticity of spirit was not proof against the drip of the dreary rain and the soughing of the east wind in the pines.

It was a cold, damp house, she said; not a home-like place at all. Very lonesome and dismal, she thought, to live in. Did we believe that houses were ever haunted?

Haunted! Alice had said the same thing when we first entered it. That was not so strange, but that this aunt of ours, generally so free from thoughts of fearful things, should be filled with the same idea. Still I had little faith in either ghosts or dreams.

The day passed very slowly and rather sadly, the rain never ceasing, the fires never warming the damp house, the dreariness never lifting from off it. The day passed slowly and cheerlessly, and night came on again— night and sleep.

The proud girl, disrobing slowly in her chamber, laid off her outer garments and stepped before the mirror for a moment to admire the gloss and heaviness of the dark hair ere she loosened its fastenings and let down its raven beauty to the night. One large, plump hand, white and lovely as ever was kissed, she plunged into the maze of braided locks, and turning this way and that, regarded the black and white contrast in the glass. Black hair, lustrous and beautiful, and soft, milky-white hand, half-hidden in the blackness, she stood gazing upon for an instant. Then she raised the other hand toward her head, and suddenly stood petrified with a momentary and terrible fear!

She saw in the mirror the figure of an old man standing in the door-way! It was her guardian, with an unholy and baleful light in his devilish eyes, pausing at the entrance to her chamber!

I cannot describe the majesty of her slow turning toward the door. No words can fitly tell with what stern grandeur she swept her round, white arm in one great gesture of rebuke, contempt and command. Standing with heaving breast and pointing finger, slowly bidding the beast begone, no language of mine can tell how queenly she was, nor how much a beast was the intruder.

But what if he will not go? She does not think of that. She feels the force of her own strong nature, and proudly and fiercely casts on him an imperious rebuke. But with the man at the door her rebuffs go but a little way. He clutches more firmly the knife that he has thrust into his sleeve, and advances a step into the chamber. She feels, with a sickness almost too terrible to be borne, that his nature is as hard as her own, and tougher by all the difference of age and sex. Then for a brief second of time she sinks into a great faintness, but rallies bravely, clutching at the toilet-table beside her.

Is there no weapon in the room? Eagerly examining the apartment, she can discern no implement ready to her hand. Ah! how she longs for one of those handy stilettoes with which jealous Spanish dames are said sometimes to meet their lovers or their rivals! How she longs for any thing with which to repel this hideous old man, whose purpose shines in his eyes.

Robbery, beyond a doubt! Are there not jewels here rare enough to tempt the miser, who loses his ward to-morrow?

He has brooded over it day after day, till his poor and greedy soul has become filled with this single idea. Why did she so bedeck herself, so flaunt in her precious gems, each one setting off those yet more priceless, yet more to be coveted charms. Ah! why, in very wantonness did she tempt the old man with a wealth of which he could never honestly become the possessor?

Day after day he has brooded over it, and the fell purpose, slowly growing beneath the heat of his withered breast, has hatched the foulest of mid-night birds this night.

So he strides another step into the room.

She stood for an instant like one frozen, and then, her great womanly fear now that the man had shown his carelessness for her commands overcoming her, she whispered with whitening lips: What do you seek here?'

He could not answer for a moment, and when he did, his voice was thick and uneven, and he shook from head to foot. It is no matter what he said. The queenly woman stood now in queenly wrath, and gave him back scorn for his insults, daring him with rash anger to lay his hand upon her.

And all this time, crouching just outside the door, like a cat watching for prey, the housekeeper, who had crept there from her hole in the cellar, lay in wait.

Then the old man advanced another step into the room-and another — and another, till he stood directly in front of the woman, his purpose glittering yet more fiercely in his eyes and illuminating every feature.

Then, in my dream, I heard her beg him, by his old love for her dead father, by his respect for what was holy and of good repute, to spare her. Yet he stood with a hard smile on his thin lips, trembling but cruelly determined, and would not hearken to her prayer.

It had not as yet occurred to her to use any physical strength against the man. She, who could have throttled him with that firm, white hand of hers, as easily almost as a cat chokes a mouse, had not yet arrived at the thought to do it. But when he approached in his mad folly close to her, she spurned him with a quick, vigorous blow that sent him reeling to the floor.

The knife dropped from his grasp as he fell, and the ring of it awoke in his heart that last, most cruel thought of murder. Gathering himself up, he seized the weapon and rushed upon the defenceless girl.

She was alone, with that fiend hacking at her with the knife! Would no one come to aid her? God give her strength for this most fearful and unequal contest!

He struck her at length, cutting a long, deep gash in her left arm.

Then the tiger in the woman was aroused, and with the look and snarl of a beast of prey, she threw herself upon him. Threw herself upon him with a fury that overbore all resistance, carrying him backward to the floor and sending his knife flying far across the room. Then kneeling upon him, she instinctively closed her white fingers about his throat till I could see the face growing purple and the tongue protruding.

Just at the instant when, in my dream, I savagely exulted over the terrible