icy coldness, whilst speedily reassuring
him with regard to her, struck him with the utmost terror. Who or what
could it be?

"For some seconds he lay in breathless silence, too frightened even to
stir, and panic-stricken lest the violent beating of his heart should
arouse the mysterious visitor. But at length, impelled by an
irresistible impulse, he sat up in bed and opened his eyes. The room
was aglow with a phosphorescent light, and in the depths of the
glittering mirror he saw a startling reproduction of the phantasmagoric
four-poster.

"He instinctively felt that there was some extraordinary change in the
supports, and that the suspicions he had at first entertained as to
their semi-human properties had become verified; but, mercifully for his
sanity, he found it impossible to look. His attention was immediately
riveted on the object by his side, which he recognized with a thrill of
surprise was a bronzed and bearded man of rather more than middle age,
who appeared to be buried in the most profound sleep.

"The picture was so vividly portrayed in the glass that Tristram could
see the gentle heaving of the bedclothes each time the sleeper breathed.

"Fascinated beyond measure at such an unlooked-for spectacle, and
desirous of a closer inspection, Tristram, with a supreme effort,
managed to tear away his eyes from the mirror and to glance at the bed,
where, to his unmitigated astonishment, he saw no one.

"Quite unable to know what to make of the phenomenon, he again directed
his gaze to the glass, and there right enough lay the sleeper.

"A cold shudder now ran through Tristram--he could no longer disguise
from himself what he had in reality thought all along, that the room was
haunted!

"The usual symptoms accompanying occult manifestations rapidly made
themselves known. Tristram was constrained to stare at the luminous
glitter before him in helpless expectation; to save his soul he could
neither have stirred nor uttered the faintest ejaculation. He saw in the
mirror the door of the bedroom slowly open, and a hideous, apish face
peep stealthily in, not at him, but at the sleeper.

"Next he watched a figure, brown, hairy and lurid--the figure of some
huge monkey--come crawling into the room on all-fours, and followed each
of its tell-tale movements as, sidling up to its sleeping victim, it
suddenly hurled itself at him, choking him to death with its long
fingers.

"This was the climax--Tristram saw no mo