e alcoholic flame flickered up before the curtain, making the poor
lad's face seem more ghastly than ever.

"You must sit down, Clarian," cried Dr. Thorne, resolutely.

Clarian smiled again, that dim, uncertain smile, and answered,--

"Nay, Doctor, let me have my own way for an hour, and after that you
shall govern me as your learned skill suggests. And do not be uneasy
about my 'creamfaced' aspect, as I see Ned is: there is plentiful
cause for it, beyond the feebleness of this very present, and
to-night is not the first time I have worn these 'linen cheeks.' Read
on, Mac."

We sat there in the dim light, breathless, awed,--for all of us saw
the boy's agony, and were the more shocked that we were unable to
understand it,--until, at last, in a voice made more impressive by
its tremor, Mac began to read the terrible text,--to read as I had
never heard him read before, until a fair chill entered our veins and
ran back to our shuddering hearts from sympathy. Then, as he read on
and painted the king and murderer together, while his voice waxed
stronger and fuller, we saw Clarian step forward to the salver and
busy with its lambent flame, till it blazed up with a broad, red
light, that, shedding a weird splendor upon all around, and lending a
supernatural effect to the room's deep shadows, the picture's
funereal aspect, and the unearthly pallor of the boy's countenance,
startled our eyes like the painful glare of midnight lightning.

"Thou canst not say, I did it! Never shake Thy gory locks at me!"

As the reader thrust the terror of these words upon us, all started
back, for the curtain was plucked suddenly away, and there before us,
not in Clarian's picture, it seemed, but in very truth, stood
Macbeth, conscious of the murdered presence. Even the reader,
absorbed as he was in his text, paused short, amazed; and I forgot
that I had seen this picture, only knew that it was a living scene of
terror. Doubtless much of this startling effect was the result of
association, the agitation of anxiety, the influence of the
impressive text, the suddenness of the apparition, the unusual light;
but in the figure of Macbeth, at which alone we gazed, there was a
life, a terrible significance, that outran all these causes. It was
not in the posture, grand as that was,--not in the sin-stamped brow,
rough with wrinkles like a storm-chafed sea,--not in the wiry hair,
gray and half rising in haggard locks, like adders that in vain try
to