This old man wore a flowered silk dressing-gown and ruffles, and he
remarked a gold ring on his finger, and on his head a cap of velvet,
such as, in the days of perukes, gentlemen wore in undress.

This direful old man carried in his ringed and ruffled hand a coil of
rope; and these two figures crossed the floor diagonally, passing the
foot of his bed, from the closet door at the farther end of the room, at
the left, near the window, to the door opening upon the lobby, close to
the bed's head, at his right.

He did not attempt to describe his sensations as these figures passed so
near him. He merely said, that so far from sleeping in that room again,
no consideration the world could offer would induce him so much as to
enter it again alone, even in the daylight. He found both doors, that of
the closet, and that of the room opening upon the lobby, in the morning
fast locked as he had left them before going to bed.

[Illustration: _These two figures crossed the floor diagonally, passing
the foot of the bed._]

In answer to a question of mine, he said that neither appeared
the least conscious of his presence. They did not seem to glide, but
walked as living men do, but without any sound, and he felt a vibration
on the floor as they crossed it. He so obviously suffered from speaking
about the apparitions, that I asked him no more questions.

There were in his description, however, certain coincidences so very
singular, as to induce me, by that very post, to write to a friend much
my senior, then living in a remote part of England, for the information
which I knew he could give me. He had himself more than once pointed out