keep listening to their screams of agonized fear,
watching the fire sweep from wing to wing until the whole mighty mass
was one enormous and awful pyre, and then, clothing himself in his
great-great-grandfather's armor, hanging himself in the midst of the
ruins of what had been a proud and noble castle. So ended a great
family, a great house.

But that was forty years ago.

He was growing drowsy; the light flickered and flared in the fireplace;
one by one the candles went out; the shadows grew thick in the room. Why
did that great iron hook stand out so plainly? why did that dark shadow
dance and quiver so mockingly behind it?--why-- But he ceased to wonder
at anything. He was asleep.

It seemed to him that he woke almost immediately; the fire still burned,
though low and fitfully on the hearth. Otto was sleeping, breathing
quietly and regularly; the shadows had gathered close around him, thick
and murky; with every passing moment the light died in the fireplace; he
felt stiff with cold. In the utter silence he heard the clock in the
village strike two. He shivered with a sudden and irresistible feeling
of fear, and abruptly turned and looked towards the hook in the ceiling.

Yes, It was there. He knew that It would be. It seemed quite natural, he
would have been disappointed had he seen nothing; but now he knew that
the story was true, knew that he was wrong, and that the dead _do_
sometimes return to earth, for there, in the fast-deepening shadow, hung
the black mass of wrought steel, turning a little now and then, with the
light flickering on the tarnished and rusty metal. He watched it
quietly; he hardly felt afraid; it was rather a sentiment of sadness and
fatality that filled him, of gloomy forebodings of something unknown,
unimaginable. He sat and watched the thing disappear in the gathering
dark, his hand on his pistol as it lay by him on the great chest. There
was no sound but the regular breathing of the sleeping boy on the
mattress.

It had grown absolutely dark; a bat fluttered against the broken glass
of the window. He wondered if he was growing mad, for--he hesitated to
acknowledge it to himself--he heard music; far, curious music, a strange
and luxurious dance, very faint, very vague, but unmistakable.

Like a flash of lightning came a jagged line of fire down the blank wall
opposite him, a line that remained, that grew wider, that let a pale
cold light into the room, showing him now all its details