the hall, and into the little parlour
on the other side, like an evil spirit whose mission was half
accomplished, and who departed from her for a season.

'She's here--she's here!' screamed poor little Mrs. Nutter.

'No, dear, no--she's not--she's gone, my dear, indeed she's gone,'
replied Mrs. Mack, herself very much appalled.

'Oh! is she gone--is she--_is_ she gone?' cried Mrs. Nutter, staring all
round the room, like a child after a frightful dream.

'She's gone, Ma'am, dear--she isn't here--by this crass, she's gone!'
said Betty, assisting Mrs. Mack, and equally frightened and incensed.

'Oh! oh! Betty, where is he gone? Oh! Mrs. Mack--oh! no--no--never! It
can't be--it couldn't. It _is_ not he--he never did it.'

'I declare to you, Ma'am, she's not right in her head!' cried poor
Betty, at her wits' ends.

'There--_there_ now, Sally, darling--_there_,' said frightened Mrs.
Mack, patting her on the back.

'There--there--there--I see him,' she cried again. 'Oh!
Charley,--Charley, sure--sure I didn't see it aright--it was not real.'

'There now, don't be frettin' yourself, Ma'am dear,' said Betty.

But Mrs. Mack glanced over her shoulder in the direction in which Mrs.
Nutter was looking, and with a sort of shock, not knowing whether it was
a bodily presence or a simulacrum raised by the incantations of Mary
Matchwell, she beheld the dark features and white eye-balls of Nutter
himself looking full on them from the open door.

'Sally--what ails you, sweetheart?' said he, coming close up to her with
two swift steps.

'Oh! Charley--'twas a dream--nothing else--a bad dream, Charley. Oh! say
it's a dream,' cried the poor terrified little woman. 'Oh! she's
coming--she's coming!' she cried again, with an appalling scream.

'_Who_--what's the matter?' cried Nutter, looking in the direction of
his poor wife's gaze in black wrath and bewilderment, and beholding the
weird woman who had followed him into the room. As he gazed on that
pale, wicked face and sable shape, the same sort of spell which she
exercised upon Mrs. Mack, and poor Mrs. Nutter, seemed in a few seconds
to steal over Nutter himself, and fix him in the place where he stood.
His mahogany face bleached to sickly boxwood, and his eyes looked like
pale balls of stone about to leap from their sockets.

After a few seconds, however, with a sort of gasp, like a man awaking
from a frightful sleep, he said--

'Betty, take the mistress to her room;' and to