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The Best Ghost Stories by Various
page 78 of 285 (27%)
length of time it had probably been there. The portrait was that of a
man who might be somewhat advanced in middle life, perhaps forty-seven
or forty-eight.

It was a remarkable face--a most impressive face. If you could fancy
some mighty serpent transformed into a man, preserving in the human
lineaments the old serpent type, you would have a better idea of that
countenance than long descriptions can convey: the width and flatness of
frontal--the tapering elegance of contour disguising the strength of the
deadly jaw--the long, large, terrible eye, glittering and green as the
emerald--and withal a certain ruthless calm, as if from the
consciousness of an immense power.

Mechanically I turned round the miniature to examine the back of it,
and on the back was engraved a pentacle; in the middle of the pentacle a
ladder, and the third step of the ladder was formed by the date 1765.
Examining still more minutely, I detected a spring; this, on being
pressed, opened the back of the miniature as a lid. Withinside the lid
were engraved, "Marianna to thee--be faithful in life and in death
to----." Here follows a name that I will not mention, but it was not
unfamiliar to me. I had heard it spoken of by old men in my childhood as
the name borne by a dazzling charlatan who had made a great sensation in
London for a year or so, and had fled the country on the charge of a
double murder within his own house--that of his mistress and his rival.
I said nothing of this to Mr. J----, to whom reluctantly I resigned the
miniature.

We had found no difficulty in opening the first drawer within the iron
safe; we found great difficulty in opening the second: it was not
locked, but it resisted all efforts, till we inserted in the clinks the
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