The Best Ghost Stories by Various
page 78 of 285 (27%)
page 78 of 285 (27%)
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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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