h the muff.
His cadaverous emaciated face, his tragic wrinkles intensified by the
upward glow from the hearth, his distorted moustache, his extraordinary
gravity and a certain fantastical air as the red light flickered over
him, all re-enforced his fine likeness to the vision-haunted knight of
La Mancha when laid up after some grand exploit. The night passed wholly
without speech. Toward its close I slept for half an hour. When I awoke
the awakened birds had begun to twitter and Searle, unperturbed, sat
staring at me. We exchanged a long look, and I felt with a pang that his
glittering eyes had tasted their last of natural sleep. "How is it? Are
you comfortable?" I nevertheless asked.

He fixed me for a long time without replying and then spoke with a
weak extravagance and with such pauses between his words as might have
represented the slow prompting of an inner voice. "You asked me when
you first knew me what I was. 'Nothing,' I said, 'nothing of any
consequence.' Nothing I've always supposed myself to be. But I've
wronged myself--I'm a great exception. I'm a haunted man!"

If sleep had passed out of his eyes I felt with even a deeper pang that
sanity had abandoned his spirit. From this moment I was prepared for
the worst. There were in my friend, however, such confirmed habits of
mildness that I found myself not in the least fearing he would prove
unmanageable. As morning began fully to dawn upon us I brought our
curious vigil to a close. Searle was so enfeebled that I gave him
my hands to help him out of his chair, and he retained them for some
moments after rising to his feet, unable as he seemed to keep his
balance. "Well," he said, "I've been once favoured, but don't think I
shall be favoured again. I shall soon be myself as fit to 'appear' as
any of them. I shall haunt the master of Lackley! It can only mean
one thing--that they're getting ready for me on the other side of the
grave."

When I touched the question of breakfast he replied that he had his
breakfast in his pocket; and he drew from his travelling-bag a phial of
morphine. He took a strong dose and went to bed. At noon I found him
on foot again, dressed, shaved, much refreshed. "Poor fellow," he said,
"you've got more than you bargained for--not only a man with a grievance
but a man with a ghost. Well, it won't be for long!" It had of course
promptly become a question whither we should now direct our steps. "As
I've so little time," he argued for th