finery, the courtly precision of that old-fashioned garb, with its
ruffles and lace and buckles, and the corpselike aspect and
ghostlike stillness of the flitting wearer. Just as the male shape
approached the female, the dark Shadow started from the wall, all
three for a moment wrapped in darkness. When the pale light
returned, the two phantoms were as if in the grasp of the Shadow
that towered between them; and there was a blood stain on the
breast of the female; and the phantom male was leaning on its
phantom sword, and blood seemed trickling fast from the ruffles
from the lace; and the darkness of the intermediate Shadow
swallowed them up,--they were gone. And again the bubbles of light
shot, and sailed, and undulated, growing thicker and thicker and
more wildly confused in their movements.

The closet door to the right of the fireplace now opened, and from
the aperture there came the form of an aged woman. In her hand she
held letters,--the very letters over which I had seen THE Hand
close; and behind her I heard a footstep. She turned round as if
to listen, and then she opened the letters and seemed to read; and
over her shoulder I saw a livid face, the face as of a man long
drowned,--bloated, bleached, seaweed tangled in its dripping hair;
and at her feet lay a form as of a corpse; and beside the corpse
there cowered a child, a miserable, squalid child, with famine in
its cheeks and fear in its eyes. And as I looked in the old
woman's face, the wrinkles and lines vanished, and it became a face
of youth,--hard-eyed, stony, but still youth; and the Shadow darted
forth, and darkened over these phantoms as it had darkened over the
last.

Nothing now was left but the Shadow, and on that my eyes were