plain."

As may be supposed, every room in the Tower was occupied. Tom took
charge of Blind Peter, and Charley Blount was put into the room he had
occupied on the ground-floor, and the stout lieutenant had another small
room on the same floor, while Stephen was placed in a small one near the
first landing, and his father had a room not far off.

The whole family and their inmates retired to rest and to sleep. No one
in the old Tower was awake. The hour of midnight had been struck by a
clock constructed by the captain. The evening had been calm, but now
the wind began to moan and sigh and whistle round the walls, and through
any crevice into which it could find an entrance, while the dash of the
sea on the beach grew every instant louder and louder, and ever and anon
the shriek of some wild fowl startled from its roost was heard, as it
flew by to find another resting-place; giving the notion to the ignorant
and superstitious that spirits of evil were flying about intent on
mischief.

The clock struck one when Stephen Ludlow awoke with a start, and saw
standing close to his bed a figure clothed in white, and from it
proceeded a curious light, which, while thrown brightly on him, darkened
everything else around. His first impulse was to hide his head under
the bed-clothes, but then he was afraid that the creature might jump on
him, and so he remained staring at it, till his hair stood on end, and
yet not daring to scream out. At length it stretched out an arm, with a
long thin hand at the end of it, shook a chain, which rattled and
clanked on the floor, and growled forth, "Out of this! out of this! out
of this!"

Stephen's teeth chattered. He could not speak--he could not move. He
thought for a moment, and hoped that the apparition might be merely the
phantom of a dream; but he pinched himself, and became too truly
convinced that it was a dreadful reality. There it stood glaring at
him; he was too frightened to mark very minutely its appearance. "Out
of this! out of this! out of this!" again repeated the phantom, slowly
retiring towards the door--a movement which would have been greatly to
Stephen's relief had he not felt sure that it would come back again.
His eyes followed it till it glided out of the door as noiselessly as it
had entered. Poor Stephen kept gazing towards the open door, which he
dared not get out of bed to shut, lest he should encounter the phantom
coming back again.

About the same time