STRANGE CONFERENCE.

Sir Francis Varney is in what he calls his own apartment. It is night,
and a dim and uncertain light from a candle which has been long
neglected, only serves to render obscurity more perplexing. The room is
a costly one. One replete with all the appliances of refinement and
luxury which the spirit and the genius of the age could possibly supply
him with, but there is upon his brow the marks of corroding care, and
little does that most mysterious being seem to care for all the rich
furnishing of that apartment in which he sits.

His cadaverous-looking face is even paler and more death-like-looking
than usual; and, if it can be conceived possible that such an one can
feel largely interested in human affairs, to look at him, we could well
suppose that some interest of no common magnitude was at stake.

Occasionally, too, he muttered some unconnected words, no doubt mentally
filling up the gaps, which rendered the sentences incomplete, and being
unconscious, perhaps, that he was giving audible utterance to any of his
dark and secret meditations.

At length he rose, and with an anxious expression of countenance, he
went to the window, and looked out into the darkness of the night. All
was still, and not an object was visible. It was that pitchy darkness
without, which, for some hours, when the moon is late in lending her
reflected beams, comes over the earth's surface.

"It is near the hour," he muttered. "It is now very near the hour;
surely he will come, and yet I know not why I should fear him, although
I seem to tremble at the thought of his approach. He will surely come.
Once a year--only once does he visit me, and then 'tis but to take the
price which he has compelled me to pay for that existence, which but for
him had been long since terminated. Sometimes I devoutly wish it were."

With a shudder he returned to the seat he had so recently left, and
there for some time he appeared to meditate in silence.

Suddenly now, a clock, which was in the hall of that mansion he had
purchased, sounded the hour loudly.

"The time has come," said Sir Francis. "The time has come. He will
surely soon be here. Hark! hark!"

Slowly and distinctly he counted the strokes of the clock, and, when
they had ceased, he exclaimed, with sudden surprise--

"Eleven! But eleven! How have I been deceived. I thought the hour of
midnight was at hand."

He hastily consulted the watch he wore, and then he indeed foun