mind that by so doing he
might not only be proclaiming to his kind entertainers how much he was
mentally distracted, but he likewise might be seriously distracting
them.

The moment this occurred to him he sat down, and was profoundly still
for some time. He then glanced at the light which had been given to him,
and he found himself almost unconsciously engaged in a mental
calculation as to how long it would last him in the night.

Half ashamed, then, of such terrors, as such a consideration would seem
to indicate, he was on the point of hastily extinguishing it, when he
happened to cast his eyes on the now mysterious and highly interesting
portrait in the panel.

The picture, as a picture, was well done, whether it was a correct
likeness or not of the party whom it represented. It was one of those
kind of portraits that seem so life-like, that, as you look at them,
they seem to return your gaze fully, and even to follow you with their
eyes from place to place.

By candle-light such an effect is more likely to become striking and
remarkable than by daylight; and now, as Charles Holland shaded his own
eyes from the light, so as to cast its full radiance upon the portrait,
he felt wonderfully interested in its life-like appearance.

"Here is true skill," he said; "such as I have not before seen. How
strangely this likeness of a man whom I never saw seems to gaze upon
me."

Unconsciously, too, he aided the effect, which he justly enough called
life-like, by a slight movement of the candle, such as any one not
blessed with nerves of iron would be sure to make, and such a movement
made the face look as if it was inspired with vitality.

Charles remained looking at the portrait for a considerable period of
time. He found a kind of fascination in it which prevented him from
drawing his eyes away from it. It was not fear which induced him to
continue gazing on it, but the circumstance that it was a likeness of
the man who, after death, was supposed to have borrowed so new and so
hideous an existence, combined with its artistic merits, chained him to
the spot.

"I shall now," he said, "know that face again, let me see it where I
may, or under what circumstances I may. Each feature is now indelibly
fixed upon my memory--I never can mistake it."

He turned aside as he uttered these words, and as he did so his eyes
fell upon a part of the ornamental frame which composed the edge of the
panel, and which seemed to him to