ers when he was
first called to see her brother in London returned to my memory with an
overwhelming force. "Had Sir John been subjected to any mental shock;
had he received any severe fright?" I knew now that the question should
have been answered in the affirmative, for I felt as certain as if
Sir John had told me himself that he _had_ received a violent shock,
probably some terrible fright, on the night of the 23d of October. What
the nature of that shock could have been my imagination was powerless to
conceive, only I knew that whatever Sir John had done or seen, Adrian
Temple and Jocelyn had done or seen also a century before and at the
same place. That horror which had blanched the face of all three men
for life had fallen perhaps with a less overwhelming force on Temple's
seasoned wickedness, but had driven the worthless Jocelyn to the
cloister, and was driving Sir John to the grave.

These thoughts as they passed through my mind filled me with a vague
alarm. The lateness of the hour, the stillness and the subdued light,
made the library in which I sat seem so vast and lonely that I began to
feel the same dread of being alone that I had observed so often in my
friend. Though only a door separated me from his bedroom, and I could
hear his deep and regular breathing, I felt as though I must go in
and waken him or Parnham to keep me company and save me from my own
reflections. By a strong effort I restrained myself, and sat down to
think the matter over and endeavour to frame some hypothesis that might
explain the mystery. But it was all to no purpose. I merely wearied
myself without being able to arrive at even a plausible conjecture,
except that it seemed as though the strange coincidence of date might
point to some ghastly charm or incantation which could only be carried
out on one certain night of the year.

It must have been near morning when, quite exhausted, I fell into an
uneasy slumber in the arm-chair where I sat. My sleep, however brief,
was peopled with a succession of fantastic visions, in which I
continually saw Sir John, not ill and wasted as now, but vigorous and
handsome as I had known him at Oxford, standing beside a glowing brazier
and reciting words I could not understand, while another man with a
sneering white face sat in a corner playing the air of the _Gagliarda_
on a violin. Parnham woke me in my chair at seven o'clock; his master,
he said, was still sleeping easily.

I had made up my min