y of the
thing--have lost my temper fairly. He took his place at the bed-head,
and kept it till I fell asleep. He was there when I awoke in the night,
and probably because the darkness, the quiet, and the sense of solitude
were favourable to him he began to grow clearer. Quite suddenly, and
with a momentary but genuine thrill of fear, I made a discovery about
him. He carried an axe. This weapon was edged like a razor, but was
unusually solid and weighty at the back. From the moment at which
I first became aware of it to that happy hour when my phantom bore
departed and took his weapon with him, there was never a conscious
second in which the axe was not in act to fall, and yet it never fell.
It was always going to strike and never struck.

'You cannot be supposed to know it, my phantom nuisance,' I said, being
ready to seek any means by which I might discredit the dreadful rapidity
with which he seemed to be growing real;' you cannot be supposed to know
it, but one of these days you will furnish excellent copy. As a literary
man's companion you are not quite without your uses. One of these days I
will haunt a rascal with you, and he shall sweat and shiver at you, as
I decline to sweat and shiver. You observe I take you gaily. I am very
much inclined to think that if I took you any other way that axe might
fall, and sever something which might be difficult to mend. So long as
you choose to stay, I mean to make a study of you.'

Most happily I was able to adhere to that resolve, but I solemnly
declare it made him no less dreadful. Sometimes I tried to ignore him,
but that was a sheer impossibility. Very often I flouted him and jeered
at him, mocked him with his own unreality, and dared him to carry out
his constant threat and strike. But all day and every day, and in all
the many sleepless watches of my nights, he kept me company, and every
hour the threatened blow of the razor-edged axe seemed likelier to fall.
But at last--thank Heaven--the work was done, I touched the two or three
hundred pounds which paid for it, and I was free to take a holiday.

We had grown too accustomed to each other to part on a sudden, even
then. I never saw him, for he was always behind me (and even when I
stood before a mirror he was invisible but _there_), but he was no
longer featureless. His eyes shone through a black vizard with one
unwinking, glittering, ceaseless threat. He wore a slashed doublet with
long hose reaching to the upper t