low-caste, spirit-subduing spectre. Observe my
blood and my bones. I am grisly and nauseous. No depending on
artificial aid. Work with grave-clothes, a coffin-lid, and a galvanic
battery. Turn hair white in a night." The creature stretched out its
fleshless arms to me as if in entreaty, but I shook my head; and it
vanished, leaving a low, sickening, repulsive odor behind it. I sank
back in my chair, so overcome by terror and disgust that I would have
very willingly resigned myself to dispensing with a ghost altogether,
could I have been sure that this was the last of the hideous procession.

A faint sound of trailing garments warned me that it was not so. I
looked up, and beheld a white figure emerging from the corridor into
the light. As it stepped across the threshold I saw that it was that
of a young and beautiful woman dressed in the fashion of a bygone day.
Her hands were clasped in front of her, and her pale, proud face bore
traces of passion and of suffering. She crossed the hall with a gentle
sound, like the rustling of autumn leaves, and then, turning her lovely
and unutterably sad eyes upon me, she said:

"I am the plaintive and sentimental, the beautiful and ill-used. I
have been forsaken and betrayed. I shriek in the night-time and glide
down passages. My antecedents are highly respectable and generally
aristocratic. My tastes are aesthetic. Old oak furniture like this
would do, with a few more coats of mail and plenty of tapestry. Will
you not take me?"

Her voice died away in a beautiful cadence as she concluded, and she
held out her hands as in supplication. I am always sensitive to female
influences. Besides, what would Jorrocks' ghost be to this? Could
anything be in better taste? Would I not be exposing myself to the
chance of injuring my nervous system by interviews with such creatures
as my last visitor, unless I decided at once? She gave me a seraphic
smile, as if she knew what was passing in my mind. That smile settled
the matter. "She will do!" I cried; "I choose this one;" and as, in
my enthusiasm, I took a step toward her, I passed over the magic circle
which had girdled me round.

"Argentine, we have been robbed!"

I had an indistinct consciousness of these words being spoken, or
rather screamed, in my ear a great number of times without my being
able to grasp their meaning. A violent throbbing in my head seemed to
adapt itself to their rhythm, and I closed my eye