hanging cloud. It was a place
and time to excite the imagination; for in the impenetrable cavities of
endless gloom there was room for the most riotous fancies to play at
will. I walked and walked, and the echoes of my footsteps on the
ungravelled and mossy path suggested a double feeling. I felt alone and
yet in company at the same time. The solitariness of the place made
itself distinct enough in the stillness, broken alone by the hollow
reverberations of my step, while those very reverberations seemed to
imbue me with an undefined feeling that I was not alone. I was not,
therefore, much startled when I was suddenly accosted from beneath the
solid darkness of an immense cypress by a voice saying, "Will you give
me a light, sir?"

"Certainly," I replied, trying in vain to distinguish the speaker amidst
the impenetrable dark.

Somebody advanced, and I held out my cigar. All I could gather
definitively about the individual who thus accosted me was that he must
have been of extremely small stature; for I, who am by no means an
overgrown man, had to stoop considerably in handing him my cigar. The
vigorous puff that he gave his own lighted up my Havana for a moment,
and I fancied that I caught a glimpse of long, wild hair. The flash was,
however, so momentary that I could not even say certainly whether this
was an actual impression or the mere effort of imagination to embody
that which the senses had failed to distinguish.

"Sir, you are out late," said this unknown to me, as he, with
half-uttered thanks, handed me back my cigar, for which I had to grope
in the gloom.

"Not later than usual," I replied, dryly.

"Hum! you are fond of late wanderings, then?"

"That is just as the fancy seizes me."

"Do you live here?"

"Yes."

"Queer house, isn't it?"

"I have only found it quiet."

"Hum! But you _will_ find it queer, take my word for it." This was
earnestly uttered; and I felt at the same time a bony finger laid on my
arm, that cut it sharply like a blunted knife.

"I cannot take your word for any such assertion," I replied rudely,
shaking off the bony finger with an irrepressible motion of disgust.

"No offence, no offence," muttered my unseen companion rapidly, in a
strange, subdued voice, that would have been shrill had it been louder;
"your being angry does not alter the matter. You will find it a queer
house. Everybody finds it a queer house. Do you know who live there?"

"I never busy myself, sir, ab