d, that
whatever he had been looking forward to with dread for some time past,
as certain to ensue, at or about twelve o clock, had yet another hour in
which to prey upon his imagination.

"How could I have made so grievous an error?" he exclaimed. "Another
hour of suspense and wonder as to whether that man be among the living
or the dead. I have thought of raising my hand against his life, but
some strange mysterious feeling has always staid me; and I have let him
come and go freely, while an opportunity might well have served me to
put such a design into execution. He is old, too--very old, and yet he
keeps death at a distance. He looked pale, but far from unwell or
failing, when last I saw him. Alas! a whole hour yet to wait. I would
that this interview were over."

That extremely well known and popular disease called the fidgets, now
began, indeed, to torment Sir Francis Varney. He could not sit--he could
not walk, and, somehow or another, he never once seemed to imagine that
from the wine cup he should experience any relief, although, upon a side
table, there stood refreshments of that character. And thus some more
time passed away, and he strove to cheat it of its weariness by thinking
of a variety of subjects; but as the fates would have it, there seemed
not one agreeable reminiscence in the mind of that most inexplicable
man, and the more he plunged into the recesses of memory the more
uneasy, not to say almost terrified, he looked and became. A shuddering
nervousness came across him, and, for a few moments, be sat as if he
were upon the point of fainting. By a vigorous effort, however, he shook
this off, and then placing before him the watch, which now indicated
about the quarter past eleven, he strove with a calmer aspect to wait
the coming of him whose presence, when he did come, would really be a
great terror, since the very thought beforehand produced so much
hesitation and apparent dismay.

In order too, if possible, then to further withdraw himself from a too
painful consideration of those terrors, which in due time the reader
will be acquainted with the cause of, he took up a book, and plunging at
random into its contents, he amused his mind for a time with the
following brief narrative:--

The wind howled round the gable ends of Bridport House in sudden and
furious gusts, while the inmates sat by the fire-side, gazing in silence
upon the blazing embers of the huge fire that shed a red and bright
li