But it is a venture to do as you would have me. Pen, ink, and paper are cold 
vehicles for the marvellous, and a "reader" decidedly a more critical animal 
than a "listener." If, however, you can induce your friends to read it after 
nightfall, and when the fireside talk has run for a while on thrilling tales of 
shapeless terror; in short, if you will secure me the mollia tempora fandi, I 
will go to my work, and say my say, with better heart. Well, then, these 
conditions presupposed, I shall waste no more words, but tell you simply how it 
all happened. 

My cousin (Tom Ludlow) and I studied medicine together. I think he would have 
succeeded, had he stuck to the profession; but he preferred the Church, poor 
fellow, and died early, a sacrifice to contagion, contracted in the noble 
discharge of his duties. For my present purpose, I say enough of his character 
when I mention that he was of a sedate but frank and cheerful nature; very exact 
in his observance of truth, and not by any means like myself--of an excitable or 
nervous temperament. 

My Uncle Ludlow--Tom's father--while we were attending lectures, purchased 
three or four old houses in Aungier Street, one of which was unoccupied. He 
resided in the country, and Tom proposed that we should take up our abode in the 
untenanted house, so long as it should continue unlet; a move which would 
accomplish the double end of settling us nearer alike to our lecture-rooms and 
to our amusements, and of relieving us from the weekly charge of rent for our 
lodgings. 

Our furniture was very scant--our whole equipage remarkably modest and 
primitive; and, in short, our arrangements pretty nearly as simple as those of a 
bivouac. Our new plan was, therefore, executed almost as soon as conceived. The 
front drawing-room was our sitting-room. I had the bedroom over it, and Tom the 
back bedroom on the same floor, which nothing could have induced me to occupy. 
The house, to begin with, was a very old one. It had been, I believe, newly 
fronted about fifty years before; but with this exception, it had nothing modern 
about it. The agent who bought it and looked into the titles for my uncle, told 
me that it was sold, along with much other forfeited property, at Chichester 
House, I think, in 1702; and had belonged to Sir Thomas Hacket, who was Lord 
Mayor of Dublin in James II's time. How old it was then, I can't say; but, at 
all events, it had seen years and changes enough to have contracted all that 
mysterious and saddened air, at once exciting and depressing, which belongs to 
most old mansions. 

There had been very little done in the way of modernising details; and, 
perhaps, it was better so; for there was something queer and by-gone in the very 
walls and ceilings--in the shape of doors and windows--in the odd diagonal site 
of the chimney- pieces--in the beams and ponderous cornices--not to mention the 
singular solidity of all the woodwork, from the banisters to the window-frames, 
which hopelessly defied disguise, and would have emphatically proclaimed their 
antiquity through any conceivable amount of modern finery and varnish. 
An effort had, indeed, been made, to the extent of papering the drawing-rooms; 
but, somehow the paper looked raw and out of keeping; and the old woman, who 
kept a little dirt-pie of a shop in the lane, and whose daughter--a girl of two 
and fifty--was our solitary handmaid, coming in at sunrise, and chastely 
receding again as soon as she had made all ready for tea in our state 
apartment;--this woman, I say, remembered it, when old Judge Horrocks (who, 
having earned the reputation of a particularly "hanging judge," ended by hanging 
himself, as the coroner's jury found, under an impulse of "temporary insanity," 
with a child's skipping-rope, over the massive old banisters) resided there, 
entertaining good company, with fine venison and rare old port. In those halcyon 
days, the drawing-rooms were hung with gilded leather, and, I dare say, cut a 
good figure, for they were really spacious rooms. 

The bedrooms were wainscoted, but the front one was not gloomy; and in it the 
cosiness of antiquity quite overcame its sombre associations. But the back 
bedroom, with its two queerly-placed melancholy windows, staring vacantly at the 
foot of the bed, and with the shadowy recess to be found in most old houses in 
Dublin, like a large ghostly closet, which, from congeniality of temperament, 
had amalgamated with the bedchamber, and dissolved the partition. At night-time, 
this "alcove"--as our "maid" was wont to call it--had, in my eyes, a specially 
sinister and suggestive character. Tom's distant and solitary candle glimmered 
vainly into its darkness. There it was always over-looking him--always itself 
impenetrable. But this was only part of the effect. The whole room was, I can't 
tell how, repulsive to me. There was, I suppose, in its proportions and 
features, a latent discord--a certain mysterious and indescribable relation, 
which jarred indistinctly upon some secret sense of the fitting and the safe, 
and raised indefinable suspicions and apprehensions of the imagination. On the 
whole, as I began by saying, nothing could have induced me to pass a night alone 
in it. 

I had never pretended to conceal from poor Tom my superstitious weakness; and 
he, on the other hand, most unaffectedly ridiculed my tremors. The sceptic was, 
however, destined to receive a lesson, as you shall hear. 
We had not been very long in occupation of our respective dormitories, when I 
began to complain of uneasy nights and disturbed sleep. I was, I suppose, the 
more impatient under this annoyance, as I was usually a sound sleeper, and by no 
means prone to nightmares. It was now, however, my destiny, instead of enjoying 
my customary repose, every night to "sup full of horrors." After a preliminary 
course of disagreeable and frightful dreams, my troubles took a definite form, 
and the same vision, without an appreciable variation in a single detail, 
visited me at least (on an average) every second night in the week. 

Now, this dream, nightmare, or infernal illusion--which you please--of which I 
was the miserable sport, was on this wise:-- 

I saw, or thought I saw, with the most abominable distinctness, although at 
the time in profound darkness, every article of furniture and accidental 
arrangement of the chamber in which I lay. This, as you know, is incidental to 
ordinary nightmare. Well, while in this clairvoyant condition, which seemed but 
the lighting up of the theatre in which was to be exhibited the monotonous 
tableau of horror, which made my nights insupportable, my attention invariably 
became, I know not why, fixed upon the windows opposite the foot of my bed; and, 
uniformly with the same effect, a sense of dreadful anticipation always took 
slow but sure possession of me. I became somehow conscious of a sort of horrid 
but undefined preparation going forward in some unknown quarter, and by some 
unknown agency, for my torment; and, after an interval, which always seemed to 
me of the same length, a picture suddenly flew up to the window, where it 
remained fixed, as if by an electrical attraction, and my discipline of horror 
then commenced, to last perhaps for hours. The picture thus mysteriously glued 
to the window-panes, was the portrait of an old man, in a crimson flowered silk 
dressing-gown, the folds of which I could now describe, with a countenance 
embodying a strange mixture of intellect, sensuality, and power, but withal 
sinister and full of malignant omen. His nose was hooked, like the beak of a 
vulture; his eyes large, grey, and prominent, and lighted up with a more than 
mortal cruelty and coldness. These features were surmounted by a crimson velvet 
cap, the hair that peeped from under which was white with age, while the 
eyebrows retained their original blackness. Well I remember every line, hue, and 
shadow of that stony countenance, and well I may! The gaze of this hellish 
visage was fixed upon me, and mine returned it with the inexplicable fascination 
of nightmare, for what appeared to me to be hours of agony. At last:-- "The cock he crew, away then flew" the fiend who had enslaved me through the awful watches of the night; and, 
harassed and nervous, I rose to the duties of the day. 

I had--I can't say exactly why, but it may have been from the exquisite 
anguish and profound impressions of unearthly horror, with which this strange 
phantasmagoria was associated--an insurmountable antipathy to describing the 
exact nature of my nightly troubles to my friend and comrade. Generally, 
however, I told him that I was haunted by abominable dreams; and, true to the 
imputed materialism of medicine, we put our heads together to dispel my horrors, 
not by exorcism, but by a tonic. 

I will do this tonic justice, and frankly admit that the accursed portrait 
began to intermit its visits under its influence. What of that? Was this 
singular apparition--as full of character as of terror--therefore the creature 
of my fancy, or the invention of my poor stomach? Was it, in short, subjective 
(to borrow the technical slang of the day) and not the palpable aggression and 
intrusion of an external agent? That, good friend, as we will both admit, by no 
means follows. The evil spirit, who enthralled my senses in the shape of that 
portrait, may have been just as near me, just as energetic, just as malignant, 
though I saw him not. What means the whole moral code of revealed religion 
regarding the due keeping of our own bodies, soberness, temperance, etc.? here 
is an obvious connexion between the material and the invisible; the healthy tone 
of the system, and its unimpaired energy, may, for aught we can tell, guard us 
against influences which would otherwise render life itself terrific. The 
mesmerist and the electro-biologist will fail upon an average with nine patients 
out of ten--so may the evil spirit. Special conditions of the corporeal system 
are indispensable to the production of certain spiritual phenomena. The 
operation succeeds sometimes--sometimes fails--that is all. 

I found afterwards that my would-be sceptical companion had his troubles too. 
But of these I knew nothing yet. One night, for a wonder, I was sleeping 
soundly, when I was roused by a step on the lobby outside my room, followed by 
the loud clang of what turned out to be a large brass candlestick, flung with 
all his force by poor Tom Ludlow over the banisters, and rattling with a rebound 
down the second flight of stairs; and almost concurrently with this, Tom burst 
open my door, and bounced into my room backwards, in a state of extraordinary 
agitation. 

I had jumped out of bed and clutched him by the arm before I had any distinct 
idea of my own whereabouts. There we were--in our shirts--standing before the 
open door--staring through the great old banister opposite, at the lobby window, 
through which the sickly light of a clouded moon was gleaming. 
"What's the matter, Tom? What's the matter with you? What the devil's the 
matter with you, Tom?" I demanded, shaking him with nervous impatience. 

He took a long breath before he answered me, and then it was not very 
coherently. 

"It's nothing, nothing at all--did I speak?--what did I say?--where's the 
candle, Richard? It's dark; I--I had a candle!" 
"Yes, dark enough," I said; "but what's the matter?--what is it?--why don't 
you speak, Tom?--have you lost your wits?--what is the matter?" 
"The matter?--oh, it is all over. It must have been a dream--nothing at all 
but a dream--don't you think so? It could not be anything more than a dream." 
"Of course," said I, feeling uncommonly nervous, "it was a dream." 
"I thought," he said, "there was a man in my room, and--and I jumped out of 
bed; and--and--where's the candle?" 
"In your room, most likely," I said, "shall I go and bring it?" 
"No; stay here--don't go; it's no matter--don't, I tell you; it was all a 
dream. Bolt the door, Dick; I'll stay here with you--I feel nervous. So, Dick, 
like a good fellow, light your candle and open the window--I am in a shocking 
state." 

I did as he asked me, and robing himself like Granuaile in one of my blankets, 
he seated himself close beside my bed. 
Everybody knows how contagious is fear of all sorts, but more especially that 
particular kind of fear under which poor Tom was at that moment labouring. I 
would not have heard, nor I believe would he have recapitulated, just at that 
moment, for half the world, the details of the hideous vision which had so 
unmanned him. 

"Don't mind telling me anything about your nonsensical dream, Tom," said I, 
affecting contempt, really in a panic; "let us talk about something else; but it 
is quite plain that this dirty old house disagrees with us both, and hang me if 
I stay here any longer, to be pestered with indigestion and--and--bad nights, so 
we may as well look out for lodgings--don't you think so?--at once." 

Tom agreed, and, after an interval, said-- 
"I have been thinking, Richard, that it is a long time since I saw my father, 
and I have made up my mind to go down to-morrow and return in a day or two, and 
you can take rooms for us in the meantime." 

I fancied that this resolution, obviously the result of the vision which had 
so profoundly scared him, would probably vanish next morning with the damps and 
shadows of night. But I was mistaken. Off went Tom at peep of day to the 
country, having agreed that so soon as I had secured suitable lodgings, I was to 
recall him by letter from his visit to my Uncle Ludlow. 

Now, anxious as I was to change my quarters, it so happened, owing to a series 
of petty procrastinations and accidents, that nearly a week elapsed before my 
bargain was made and my letter of recall on the wing to Tom; and, in the 
meantime, a trifling adventure or two had occurred to your humble servant, 
which, absurd as they now appear, diminished by distance, did certainly at the 
time serve to whet my appetite for change considerably. 

A night or two after the departure of my comrade, I was sitting by my bedroom 
fire, the door locked, and the ingredients of a tumbler of hot whisky-punch upon 
the crazy spider-table; for, as the best mode of keeping the 
"Black spirits and white,
Blue spirits and grey," 

with which I was environed, at bay, I had adopted the practice recommended by 
the wisdom of my ancestors, and "kept my spirits up by pouring spirits down." I 
had thrown aside my volume of Anatomy, and was treating myself by way of a 
tonic, preparatory to my punch and bed, to half-a-dozen pages of the Spectator, 
when I heard a step on the flight of stairs descending from the attics. It was 
two o'clock, and the streets were as silent as a church-yard--the sounds were, 
therefore, perfectly distinct. There was a slow, heavy tread, characterised by 
the emphasis and deliberation of age, descending by the narrow staircase from 
above; and, what made the sound more singular, it was plain that the feet which 
produced it were perfectly bare, measuring the descent with something between a 
pound and a flop, very ugly to hear. 

I knew quite well that my attendant had gone away many hours before, and that 
nobody but myself had any business in the house. It was quite plain also that 
the person who was coming downstairs had no intention whatever of concealing his 
movements; but, on the contrary, appeared disposed to make even more noise, and 
proceed more deliberately, than was at all necessary. When the step reached the 
foot of the stairs outside my room, it seemed to stop; and I expected every 
moment to see my door open spontaneously, and give admission to the original of 
my detested portrait. I was, however, relieved in a few seconds by hearing the 
descent renewed, just in the same manner, upon the staircase leading down to the 
drawing-rooms, and thence, after another pause, down the next flight, and so on 
to the hall, whence I heard no more. 

Now, by the time the sound had ceased, I was wound up, as they say, to a very 
unpleasant pitch of excitement. I listened, but there was not a stir. I screwed 
up my courage to a decisive experiment--opened my door, and in a stentorian 
voice bawled over the banisters, "Who's there?" There was no answer, but the 
ringing of my own voice through the empty old house,--no renewal of the 
movement; nothing, in short, to give my unpleasant sensations a definite 
direction. There is, I think, something most disagreeably disenchanting in the 
sound of one's own voice under such circumstances, exerted in solitude and in 
vain. It redoubled my sense of isolation, and my misgivings increased on 
perceiving that the door, which I certainly thought I had left open, was closed 
behind me; in a vague alarm, lest my retreat should be cut off, I got again into 
my room as quickly as I could, where I remained in a state of imaginary 
blockade, and very uncomfortable indeed, till morning. 

Next night brought no return of my barefooted fellow-lodger; but the night 
following, being in my bed, and in the dark--somewhere, I suppose, about the 
same hour as before, I distinctly heard the old fellow again descending from the 
garrets. 

This time I had had my punch, and the morale of the garrison was consequently 
excellent. I jumped out of bed, clutched the poker as I passed the expiring 
fire, and in a moment was upon the lobby. The sound had ceased by this time--the 
dark and chill were discouraging; and, guess my horror, when I saw, or thought I 
saw, a black monster, whether in the shape of a man or a bear I could not say, 
standing, with its back to the wall, on the lobby, facing me, with a pair of 
great greenish eyes shining dimly out. Now, I must be frank, and confess that 
the cupboard which displayed our plates and cups stood just there, though at the 
moment I did not recollect it. At the same time I must honestly say, that making 
every allowance for an excited imagination, I never could satisfy myself that I 
was made the dupe of my own fancy in this matter; for this apparition, after one 
or two shiftings of shape, as if in the act of incipient transformation, began, 
as it seemed on second thoughts, to advance upon me in its original form. From 
an instinct of terror rather than of courage, I hurled the poker, with all my 
force, at its head; and to the music of a horrid crash made my way into my room, 
and double-locked the door. Then, in a minute more, I heard the horrid bare feet 
walk down the stairs, till the sound ceased in the hall, as on the former 
occasion. 

If the apparition of the night before was an ocular delusion of my fancy 
sporting with the dark outlines of our cupboard, and if its horrid eyes were 
nothing but a pair of inverted teacups, I had, at all events, the satisfaction 
of having launched the poker with admirable effect, and in true "fancy" phrase, 
"knocked its two daylights into one," as the commingled fragments of my 
tea-service testified. I did my best to gather comfort and courage from these 
evidences; but it would not do. And then what could I say of those horrid bare 
feet, and the regular tramp, tramp, tramp, which measured the distance of the 
entire staircase through the solitude of my haunted dwelling, and at an hour 
when no good influence was stirring? Confound it!--the whole affair was 
abominable. I was out of spirits, and dreaded the approach of night. 
It came, ushered ominously in with a thunder-storm and dull torrents of 
depressing rain. Earlier than usual the streets grew silent; and by twelve 
o'clock nothing but the comfortless pattering of the rain was to be heard. 
I made myself as snug as I could. I lighted two candles instead of one. I 
forswore bed, and held myself in readiness for a sally, candle in hand; for, 
coute qui coute, I was resolved to see the being, if visible at all, who 
troubled the nightly stillness of my mansion. I was fidgety and nervous and, 
tried in vain to interest myself with my books. I walked up and down my room, 
whistling in turn martial and hilarious music, and listening ever and anon for 
the dreaded noise. I sate down and stared at the square label on the solemn and 
reserved-looking black bottle, until "FLANAGAN & CO.'S BEST OLD MALT WHISKY grew into a sort of subdued accompaniment to all the fantastic and horrible 
speculations which chased one another through my brain. 
Silence, meanwhile, grew more silent, and darkness darker. I listened in vain 
for the rumble of a vehicle, or the dull clamour of a distant row. There was 
nothing but the sound of a rising wind, which had succeeded the thunder-storm 
that had travelled over the Dublin mountains quite out of hearing. In the middle 
of this great city I began to feel myself alone with nature, and Heaven knows 
what beside. My courage was ebbing. Punch, however, which makes beasts of so 
many, made a man of me again--just in time to hear with tolerable nerve and 
firmness the lumpy, flabby, naked feet deliberately descending the stairs again. 

I took a candle, not without a tremor. As I crossed the floor I tried to 
extemporise a prayer, but stopped short to listen, and never finished it. The 
steps continued. I confess I hesitated for some seconds at the door before I 
took heart of grace and opened it. When I peeped out the lobby was perfectly 
empty--there was no monster standing on the staircase; and as the detested sound 
ceased, I was reassured enough to venture forward nearly to the banisters. 
Horror of horrors! within a stair or two beneath the spot where I stood the 
unearthly tread smote the floor. My eye caught something in motion; it was about 
the size of Goliath's foot--it was grey, heavy, and flapped with a dead weight 
from one step to another. As I am alive, it was the most monstrous grey rat I 
ever beheld or imagined. 

Shakespeare says--"Some men there are cannot abide a gaping pig, and some that 
are mad if they behold a cat." I went well-nigh out of my wits when I beheld 
this rat; for, laugh at me as you may, it fixed upon me, I thought, a perfectly 
human expression of malice; and, as it shuffled about and looked up into my face 
almost from between my feet, I saw, I could swear it--I felt it then, and know 
it now, the infernal gaze and the accursed countenance of my old friend in the 
portrait, transfused into the visage of the bloated vermin before me. 
I bounced into my room again with a feeling of loathing and horror I cannot 
describe, and locked and bolted my door as if a lion had been at the other side. 
D--n him or it; curse the portrait and its original! I felt in my soul that the 
rat--yes, the rat, the RAT I had just seen, was that evil being in masquerade, 
and rambling through the house upon some infernal night lark. 
Next morning I was early trudging through the miry streets; and, among other 
transactions, posted a peremptory note recalling Tom. On my return, however, I 
found a note from my absent "chum," announcing his intended return next day. I 
was doubly rejoiced at this, because I had succeeded in getting rooms; and 
because the change of scene and return of my comrade were rendered specially 
pleasant by the last night's half ridiculous half horrible adventure. 
I slept extemporaneously in my new quarters in Digges' Street that night, and 
next morning returned for breakfast to the haunted mansion, where I was certain 
Tom would call immediately on his arrival. 

I was quite right--he came; and almost his first question referred to the 
primary object of our change of residence. 
"Thank God," he said with genuine fervour, on hearing that all was arranged. 
"On your account I am delighted. As to myself, I assure you that no earthly 
consideration could have induced me ever again to pass a night in this 
disastrous old house." 

"Confound the house!" I ejaculated, with a genuine mixture of fear and 
detestation, "we have not

"You shall hear it, Dick; I'll tell it to you," he said. "Begad, sir, I should 
feel quite queer, though, telling it here, though we are too strong a body for 
ghosts to meddle with just now." 

Though he spoke this like a joke, I think it was serious calculation. Our Hebe 
was in a corner of the room, packing our cracked delf tea and dinner-services in 
a basket. She soon suspended operations, and with mouth and eyes wide open 
became an absorbed listener. Tom's experiences were told nearly in these 
words:-- "I saw it three times, Dick--three distinct times; and I am perfectly certain 
it meant me some infernal harm. I was, I say, in danger--in extreme danger; for, 
if nothing else had happened, my reason would most certainly have failed me, 
unless I had escaped so soon. Thank God. I did escape. 
"The first night of this hateful disturbance, I was lying in the attitude of 
sleep, in that lumbering old bed. I hate to think of it. I was really wide 
awake, though I had put out my candle, and was lying as quietly as if I had been 
asleep; and although accidentally restless, my thoughts were running in a 
cheerful and agreeable channel. 

"I think it must have been two o'clock at least when I thought I heard a sound 
in that--that odious dark recess at the far end of the bedroom. It was as if 
someone was drawing a piece of cord slowly along the floor, lifting it up, and 
dropping it softly down again in coils. I sate up once or twice in my bed, but 
could see nothing, so I concluded it must be mice in the wainscot. I felt no 
emotion graver than curiosity, and after a few minutes ceased to observe it. 
"While lying in this state, strange to say; without at first a suspicion of 
anything supernatural, on a sudden I saw an old man, rather stout and square, in 
a sort of roan-red dressing-gown, and with a black cap on his head, moving 
stiffly and slowly in a diagonal direction, from the recess, across the floor of 
the bed-room, passing my bed at the foot, and entering the lumber-closet at the 
left. He had something under his arm; his head hung a little at one side; and 
merciful God! when I saw his face." 

Tom stopped for a while, and then said:-- 
"That awful countenance, which living or dying I never can forget, disclosed 
what he was. Without turning to the right or left, he passed beside me, and 
entered the closet by the bed's head. 

"While this fearful and indescribable type of death and guilt was passing, I 
felt that I had no more power to speak or stir than if I had been myself a 
corpse. For hours after it had disappeared, I was too terrified and weak to 
move. As soon as daylight came, I took courage, and examined the room, and 
especially the course which the frightful intruder had seemed to take, but there 
was not a vestige to indicate anybody's having passed there; no sign of any 
disturbing agency visible among the lumber that strewed the floor of the closet. 

"I now began to recover a little. I was fagged and exhausted, and at last, 
overpowered by a feverish sleep. I came down late; and finding you out of 
spirits, on account of your dreams about the portrait, whose original I am now 
certain disclosed himself to me, I did not care to talk about the infernal 
vision. In fact, I was trying to persuade myself that the whole thing was an 
illusion, and I did not like to revive in their intensity the hated impressions 
of the past night--or, to risk the constancy of my scepticism, by recounting the 
tale of my sufferings. 

"It required some nerve, I can tell you, to go to my haunted chamber next 
night, and lie down quietly in the same bed," continued Tom. " I did so with a 
degree of trepidation, which, I am not ashamed to say, a very little matter 
would have sufficed to stimulate to downright panic. This night, however, passed 
off quietly enough, as also the next; and so too did two or three more. I grew 
more confident, and began to fancy that I believed in the theories of spectral 
illusions, with which I had at first vainly tried to impose upon my convictions. 

"The apparition had been, indeed, altogether anomalous. It had crossed the 
room without any recognition of my presence: I had not disturbed it, and it had 
no mission to me. What, then, was the imaginable use of its crossing the room in 
a visible shape at all? Of course it might have been in the closet instead of 
going there, as easily as it introduced itself into the recess without entering 
the chamber in a shape discernible by the senses. Besides, how the deuce had I 
seen it? It was a dark night; I had no candle; there was no fire; and yet I saw 
it as distinctly, in colouring and outline, as ever I beheld human form! A 
cataleptic dream would explain it all; and I was determined that a dream it 
should be. 

"One of the most remarkable phenomena connected with the practice of mendacity 
is the vast number of deliberate lies we tell ourselves, whom, of all persons, 
we can least expect to deceive. In all this, I need hardly tell you, Dick, I was 
simply lying to myself, and did not believe one word of the wretched humbug. Yet 
I went on, as men will do, like persevering charlatans and impostors, who tire 
people into credulity by the mere force of reiteration; so I hoped to win myself 
over at last to a comfortable scepticism about the ghost. 

"He had not appeared a second time--that certainly was a comfort; and what, 
after all, did I care for him, and his queer old toggery and strange looks? Not 
a fig! I was nothing the worse for having seen him, and a good story the better. 
So I tumbled into bed, put out my candle, and, cheered by a loud drunken quarrel 
in the back lane, went fast asleep. 

"From this deep slumber I awoke with a start. I knew I had had a horrible 
dream; but what it was I could not remember. My heart was thumping furiously; I 
felt bewildered and feverish; I sate up in the bed and looked about the room. A 
broad flood of moonlight came in through the curtainless window; everything was 
as I had last seen it; and though the domestic squabble in the back lane was, 
unhappily for me, allayed, I yet could hear a pleasant fellow singing, on his 
way home, the then popular comic ditty called, 'Murphy Delany.' Taking advantage 
of this diversion I lay down again, with my face towards the fireplace, and 
closing my eyes, did my best to think of nothing else but the song, which was 
every moment growing fainter in the distance:-- 
''Twas Murphy Delany, so funny and frisky,
Stept into a shebeen shop to get his skin full;
He reeled out again pretty well lined with whiskey,
As fresh as a shamrock, as blind as a bull.' 

"The singer, whose condition I dare say resembled that of his hero, was soon too 
far off to regale my ears any more; and as his music died away, I myself sank 
into a doze, neither sound nor refreshing. Somehow the song had got into my 
head, and I went meandering on through the adventures of my respectable 
fellow-countryman, who, on emerging from the 'shebeen shop,' fell into a river, 
from which he was fished up to be 'sat upon' by a coroner's jury, who having 
learned from a 'horse-doctor' that he was 'dead as a door-nail, so there was an 
end,' returned their verdict accordingly, just as he returned to his senses, 
when an angry altercation and a pitched battle between the body and the coroner 
winds up the lay with due spirit and pleasantry. 

"Through this ballad I continued with a weary monotony to plod, down to the 
very last line, and then da capo, and so on, in my uncomfortable half-sleep, for 
how long, I can't conjecture. I found myself at last, however, muttering, 'dead 
as a door-nail, so there was an end'; and something like another voice within 
me, seemed to say, very faintly, but sharply, 'dead! dead! dead! and may the 
Lord have mercy on your soul!' and instantaneously I was wide awake, and staring 
right before me from the pillow. 

"Now--will you believe it, Dick?--I saw the same accursed figure standing full 
front, and gazing at me with its stony and fiendish countenance, not two yards 
from the bedside." 

Tom stopped here, and wiped the perspiration from his face. I felt very queer. 
The girl was as pale as Tom; and, assembled as we were in the very scene of 
these adventures, we were all, I dare say, equally grateful for the clear 
daylight and the resuming bustle out of doors. 
"For about three seconds only I saw it plainly; then it grew indistinct; but, 
for a long time, there was something like a column of dark vapour where it had 
been standing between me and the wall; and I felt sure that he was still there. 
After a good while, this appearance went too. I took my clothes downstairs to 
the hall, and dressed there, with the door half open; then went out into the 
street, and walked about the town till morning, when I came back, in a miserable 
state of nervousness and exhaustion. I was such a fool, Dick, as to be ashamed 
to tell you how I came to be so upset. I thought you would laugh at me; 
especially as I had always talked philosophy, and treated your ghosts with 
contempt. I concluded you would give me no quarter; and so kept my tale of 
horror to myself. 

"Now, Dick, you will hardly believe me, when I assure you, that for many 
nights after this last experience, I did not go to my room at all. I used to sit 
up for a while in the drawing-room after you had gone up to your bed; and then 
steal down softly to the hall-door, let myself out, and sit in the ' Robin Hood 
' tavern until the last guest went off; and then I got through the night like a 
sentry, pacing the streets till morning. 

"For more than a week I never slept in bed. I sometimes had a snooze on a form 
in the 'Robin Hood,' and sometimes a nap in a chair during the day; but regular 
sleep I had absolutely none. 

"I was quite resolved that we should get into another house; but I could not 
bring myself to tell you the reason, and I somehow put it off from day to day, 
although my life was, during every hour of this procrastination, rendered as 
miserable as that of a felon with the constables on his track. I was growing 
absolutely ill from this wretched mode of life. 

"One afternoon I determined to enjoy an hour's sleep upon your bed. I hated 
mine; so that I had never, except in a stealthy visit every day to unmake it, 
lest Martha should discover the secret of my nightly absence, entered the 
ill-omened chamber. 

"As ill-luck would have it, you had locked your bedroom, and taken away the 
key. I went into my own to unsettle the bedclothes, as usual, and give the bed 
the appearance of having been slept in. Now, a variety of circumstances 
concurred to bring about the dreadful scene through which I was that night to 
pass. In the first place, I was literally overpowered with fatigue, and longing 
for sleep; in the next place, the effect of this extreme exhaustion upon my 
nerves resembled that of a narcotic, and rendered me less susceptible than, 
perhaps I should in any other condition have been, of the exciting fears which 
had become habitual to me. Then again, a little bit of the window was open, a 
pleasant freshness pervaded the room, and, to crown all, the cheerful sun of day 
was making the room quite pleasant. What was to prevent my enjoying an hour's 
nap here? The whole air was resonant with the cheerful hum of life, and the 
broad matter-of-fact light of day filled every corner of the room. 
"I yielded--stifling my qualms--to the almost overpowering temptation; and 
merely throwing off my coat, and loosening my cravat, I lay down, limiting 
myself to half-an-hour's doze in the unwonted enjoyment of a feather bed, a 
coverlet, and a bolster. 

"It was horribly insidious; and the demon, no doubt, marked my infatuated 
preparations. Dolt that I was, I fancied, with mind and body worn out for want 
of sleep, and an arrear of a full week's rest to my credit, that such measure as 
half-an-hour's sleep, in such a situation, was possible. My sleep was 
death-like, long, and dreamless. 

"Without a start or fearful sensation of any kind, I waked gently, but 
completely. It was, as you have good reason to remember, long past midnight--I 
believe, about two o'clock. When sleep has been deep and long enough to satisfy 
nature thoroughly, one often wakens in this way, suddenly, tranquilly, and 
completely. 

"There was a figure seated in that lumbering, old sofa-chair, near the 
fireplace. Its back was rather towards me, but I could not be mistaken; it 
turned slowly round, and, merciful heavens! there was the stony face, with its 
infernal lineaments of malignity and despair, gloating on me. There was now no 
doubt as to its consciousness of my presence, and the hellish malice with which 
it was animated, for it arose, and drew close to the bedside. There was a rope 
about its neck, and the other end, coiled up, it held stiffly in its hand. 
"My good angel nerved me for this horrible crisis. I remained for some seconds 
transfixed by the gaze of this tremendous phantom. He came close to the bed, and 
appeared on the point of mounting upon it. The next instant I was upon the floor 
at the far side, and in a moment more was, I don't know how, upon the lobby. 
"But the spell was not yet broken; the valley of the shadow of death was not 
yet traversed. The abhorred phantom was before me there; it was standing near 
the banisters, stooping a little, and with one end of the rope round its own 
neck, was poising a noose at the other, as if to throw over mine; and while 
engaged in this baleful pantomime, it wore a smile so sensual, so unspeakably 
dreadful, that my senses were nearly overpowered. I saw and remember nothing 
more, until I found myself in your room. 

"I had a wonderful escape, Dick--there is no disputing that--an escape for 
which, while I live, I shall bless the mercy of heaven. No one can conceive or 
imagine what it is for flesh and blood to stand in the presence of such a thing, 
but one who has had the terrific experience. Dick, Dick, a shadow has passed 
over me--a chill has crossed my blood and marrow, and I will never be the same 
again--never, Dick--never!" 

Our handmaid, a mature girl of two-and-fifty, as I have said, stayed her hand, 
as Tom's story proceeded, and by little and little drew near to us, with open 
mouth, and her brows contracted over her little, beady black eyes, till stealing 
a glance over her shoulder now and then, she established herself close behind 
us. During the relation, she had made various earnest comments, in an under- 
tone; but these and her ejaculations, for the sake of brevity and simplicity, I 
have omitted in my narration. 

"It's often I heard tell of it," she now said, "but I never believed it 
rightly till now--though, indeed, why should not I? Does not my mother, down 
there in the lane, know quare stories, God bless us, beyant telling about it? 
But you ought not to have slept in the back bedroom. She was loath to let me be 
going in and out of that room even in the day time, let alone for any Christian 
to spend the night in it; for sure she says it was his own bedroom." 

"Whose own bedroom?" we asked, in a breath. 

"Why, his--the ould Judge's--Judge Horrock's, to be sure, God rest his sowl"; 
and she looked fearfully round. 

"Amen!" I muttered. "But did he die there?" 

"Die there! No, not quite there," she said. "Shure, was not it over the 
banisters he hung himself, the ould sinner, God be merciful to us all? and was 
not it in the alcove they found the handles of the skipping-rope cut off, and 
the knife where he was settling the cord, God bless us, to hang himself with? It 
was his housekeeper's daughter owned the rope, my mother often told me, and the 
child never throve after, and used to be starting up out of her sleep, and 
screeching in the night time, wid dhrames and frights that cum an her; and they 
said how it was the speerit of the ould Judge that was tormentin' her; and she 
used to be roaring and yelling out to hould back the big ould fellow with the 
crooked neck; and then she'd screech 'Oh, the master! the master! he's stampin' 
at me, and beckoning to me! Mother, darling, don't let me go!' And so the poor 
crathure died at last, and the docthers said it was wather on the brain, for it 
was all they could say." 

"How long ago was all this?" I asked. 

"Oh, then, how would I know?" she answered. "But it must be a wondherful long 
time ago, for the housekeeper was an ould woman, with a pipe in her mouth, and 
not a tooth left, and better nor eighty years ould when my mother was first 
married; and they said she was a rale buxom, fine-dressed woman when the ould 
Judge come to his end; an', indeed, my mother's not far from eighty years ould 
herself this day; and what made it worse for the unnatural ould villain, God 
rest his soul, to frighten the little girl out of the world the way he did, was 
what was mostly thought and believed by everyone. My mother says how the poor 
little crathure was his own child; for he was by all accounts an ould villain 
every way, an' the hangin'est judge that ever was known in Ireland's ground." 
"From what you said about the danger of sleeping in that bed-room," said I, " 
I suppose there were stories about the ghost having appeared there to others." 
"Well, there was things said--quare things, surely," she answered, as it 
seemed, with some reluctance. "And why would not there? Sure was it not up in 
that same room he slept for more than twenty years? and was it not in the alcove 
he got the rope ready that done his own business at last, the way he done many a 
betther man's in his lifetime?--and was not the body lying in the same bed after 
death, and put in the coffin there, too, and carried out to his grave from it in 
Pether's churchyard, after the coroner was done? But there was quare stories--my 
mother has them all--about how one Nicholas Spaight got into trouble on the head 
of it." 

"And what did they say of this Nicholas Spaight?" I asked. 
"Oh, for that matther, it's soon told," she answered. 
And she certainly did relate a very strange story, which so piqued my 
curiosity, that I took occasion to visit the ancient lady, her mother, from whom 
I learned many very curious particulars. Indeed, I am tempted to tell the tale, 
but my fingers are weary, and I must defer it. But if you wish to hear it 
another time, I shall do my best. 

When we had heard the strange tale I have not told you, we put one or two 
further questions to her about the alleged spectral visitations, to which the 
house had, ever since the death of the wicked old Judge, been subjected. 
"No one ever had luck in it," she told us. "There was always cross accidents, 
sudden deaths, and short times in it. The first that tuck it was a family--I 
forget their name--but at any rate there was two young ladies and their papa. He 
was about sixty, and a stout healthy gentleman as you'd wish to see at that age. 
Well, he slept in that unlucky back bedroom; and, God between us an' harm! sure 
enough he was found dead one morning, half out of the bed, with his head as 
black as a sloe, and swelled like a puddin', hanging down near the floor. It was 
a fit, they said. He was as dead as a mackerel, and so he could not say what it 
was; but the ould people was all sure that it was nothing at all but the ould 
Judge, God bless us! that frightened him out of his senses and his life 
together. 

"Some time after there was a rich old maiden lady took the house. I don't know 
which room she slept in, but she lived alone; and at any rate, one morning, the 
servants going down early to their work, found her sitting on the 
passage-stairs, shivering and talkin' to herself, quite mad; and never a word 
more could any of them or her friends get from her ever afterwards but, 'Don't 
ask me to go, for I promised to wait for him.' They never made out from her who 
it was she meant by him, but of course those that knew all about the ould house 
were at no loss for the meaning of all that happened to her. 

"Then afterwards, when the house was let out in lodgings, there was Micky 
Byrne that took the same room, with his wife and three little children; and sure 
I heard Mrs. Byrne myself telling how the children used to be lifted up in the 
bed at night, she could not see by what mains; and how they were starting and 
screeching every hour, just all as one as the housekeeper's little girl that 
died, till at last one night poor Micky had a dhrop in him, the way he used now 
and again; and what do you think in the middle of the night he thought he heard 
a noise on the stairs, and being in liquor, nothing less id do him but out he 
must go himself to see what was wrong. Well, after that, all she ever heard of 
him was himself sayin', 'Oh, God!' and a tumble that shook the very house; and 
there, sure enough, he was lying on the lower stairs, under the lobby, with his 
neck smashed double undher him, where he was flung over the banisters." 

Then the handmaiden added:-- 
"I'll go down to the lane, and send up Joe Gavvey to pack up the rest of the 
taythings, and bring all the things across to your new lodgings." 
And so we all sallied out together, each of us breathing more freely, I have 
no doubt, as we crossed that ill-omened threshold for the last time. 
Now, I may add thus much, in compliance with the immemorial usage of the realm 
of fiction, which sees the hero not only through his adventures, but fairly out 
of the world. You must have perceived that what the flesh, blood, and bone hero 
of romance proper is to the regular compounder of fiction, this old house of 
brick, wood, and mortar is to the humble recorder of this true tale. I, 
therefore, relate, as in duty bound, the catastrophe which ultimately befell it, 
which was simply this--that about two years subsequently to my story it was 
taken by a quack doctor, who called himself Baron Duhlstoerf, and filled the 
parlour windows with bottles of indescribable horrors preserved in brandy, and 
the newspapers with the usual grandiloquent and mendacious advertisements. This 
gentleman among his virtues did not reckon sobriety, and one night, being 
overcome with much wine, he set fire to his bed curtains, partially burned 
himself, and totally consumed the house. It was afterwards rebuilt, and for a 
time an undertaker established himself in the premises.