eautiful light of day to what haunt the imagination, and often render
the judgment almost incapable of action, when the heavy shadow of night
is upon all things.

There must be a downright physical reason for this effect--it is so
remarkable and so universal. It seems that the sun's rays so completely
alter and modify the constitution of the atmosphere, that it produces,
as we inhale it, a wonderfully different effect upon the nerves of the
human subject.

We can account for this phenomenon in no other way. Perhaps never in his
life had he, Henry Bannerworth, felt so strongly this transition of
feeling as he now felt it, when the beautiful daylight gradually dawned
upon him, as he kept his lonely watch by the bedside of his slumbering
sister.

That watch had been a perfectly undisturbed one. Not the least sight or
sound of any intrusion had reached his senses. All had been as still as
the very grave.

And yet while the night lasted, and he was more indebted to the rays of
the candle, which he had placed upon a shelf, for the power to
distinguish objects than to the light of the morning, a thousand uneasy
and strange sensations had found a home in his agitated bosom.

He looked so many times at the portrait which was in the panel that at
length he felt an undefined sensation of terror creep over him whenever
he took his eyes off it.

He tried to keep himself from looking at it, but he found it vain, so he
adopted what, perhaps, was certainly the wisest, best plan, namely, to
look at it continually.

He shifted his chair so that he could gaze upon it without any effort,
and he placed the candle so that a faint light was thrown upon it, and
there he sat, a prey to many conflicting and uncomfortable feelings,
until the daylight began to make the candle flame look dull and sickly.

Solution for the events of the night he could find none. He racked his
imagination in vain to find some means, however vague, of endeavouring
to account for what occurred, and still he was at fault. All was to him
wrapped in the gloom of the most profound mystery.

And how strangely, too, the eyes of that portrait appeared to look upon
him--as if instinct with life, and as if the head to which they belonged
was busy in endeavouring to find out the secret communings of his soul.
It was wonderfully well executed that portrait; so life-like, that the
very features seemed to move as you gazed upon them.

"It shall be removed," said Henry.