mood for uncomfortable impressions. I resolved to
get away from their vague fore-shadowings of the evil things upstairs.

"If," said I, "you will show me to this haunted room of yours, I will
make myself comfortable there."

The old man with the cough jerked his head back so suddenly that it
startled me, and shot another glance of his red eyes at me from out of
the darkness under the shade, but no one answered me. I waited a minute,
glancing from one to the other. The old woman stared like a dead body,
glaring into the fire with lack-lustre eyes.

"If," I said, a little louder, "if you will show me to this haunted room
of yours, I will relieve v you from the task of entertaining me."

"There's a candle on the slab outside the door," said the man with the
withered hand, looking at my feet as he addressed me. "But if you go to
the Red Room to-night--"

"This night of all nights!" said the old woman, softly.

"--You go alone."

"Very well," I answered, shortly, "and which way do I go?"

"You go along the passage for a bit," said he, nodding his head on his
shoulder at the door, "until you come to a spiral staircase; and on the
second landing is a door covered with green baize. Go through that, and
down the long corridor to the end, and the Red Room is on your left up
the steps."

"Have I got that right?" I said, and repeated his directions.

He corrected me in one particular.

"And you are really going?" said the man with the shade, looking at me
again for the third time with that queer, unnatural tilting of the face.

"This night of all nights!" whispered the old woman.

"It is what I came for," I said, and moved toward the door. As I did so,
the old man with the shade rose and staggered round the table, so as to
be closer to the others and to the fire. At the door I turned and
looked at them, and saw they were all close together, dark against the
firelight, staring at me over their shoulders, with an intent expression
on their ancient faces.

"Good-night," I said, setting the door open.. "It's your own choosing,"
said the man with the withered arm.

I left the door wide open until the candle was well alight, and then I
shut them in, and walked down the chilly, echoing passage.

I must confess that the oddness of these three old pensioners in
whose charge her ladyship had left the castle, and the deep-toned,
old-fashioned furniture of the housekeeper's room, in which they
foregathered, had affected me