on the breakfast-table, and
read these lines:

"ALLAN ARMADALE'S DREAM.

"Early on the morning of June the first, eighteen hundred and fifty-one,
I found myself (through circumstances which it is not important to
mention in this place) left alone with a friend of mine--a young man
about my own age--on board the French timber-ship named _La Grace de
Dieu_, which ship then lay wrecked in the channel of the Sound between
the main-land of the Isle of Man and the islet called the Calf. Having
not been in bed the previous night, and feeling overcome by fatigue, I
fell asleep on the deck of the vessel. I was in my usual good health at
the time, and the morning was far enough advanced for the sun to have
risen. Under these circumstances, and at that period of the day, I
passed from sleeping to dreaming. As clearly as I can recollect it,
after the lapse of a few hours, this was the succession of events
presented to me by the dream:

"1. The first event of which I was conscious was the appearance of my
father. He took me silently by the hand; and we found ourselves in the
cabin of a ship.

"2. Water rose slowly over us in the cabin; and I and my father sank
through the water together.

"3. An interval of oblivion followed; and then the sense came to me of
being left alone in the darkness.

"4. I waited.

"5. The darkness opened, and showed me the vision--as in a picture--of a
broad, lonely pool, surrounded by open ground. Above the farther margin
of the pool I saw the cloudless western sky, red with the light of
sunset.

"6. On the near margin of the pool there stood the Shadow of a Woman.

"7. It was the shadow only. No indication was visible to me by which I
could identify it, or compare it with any living creature. The long robe
showed me that it was the shadow of a woman, and showed me nothing more.

"8. The darkness closed again--remained with me for an interval--and
opened for the second time.

"9. I found myself in a room, standing before a long window. The
only object of furniture or of ornament that I saw (or that I can now
remember having seen) was a little statue placed near me. The window
opened on a lawn and flower-garden; and the rain was pattering heavily
against the glass.

"10. I was not alone in the room. Standing opposite to me at the window
was the Shadow of a Man.

"11. I saw no more of it; I knew no more of it than I saw and knew of
the shadow of the woman. But the shadow of the man moved