this light there emanated a soft, gray, transparent mist
and a faint but exquisite odour. I stood in the midst of the circle,
and within the circle also, close by my side, stood the Scin-Laeca,--no
longer reflected on the wall, but apart from it, erect, rounded into
more integral and distinct form, yet impalpable, and from it there
breathed an icy air. Then lifting the wand, the broader end of which
rested in the palm of my hand, the two forefingers closing lightly over
it in a line parallel with the point, I directed it towards the wide
aperture before me, fronting the mausoleum. I repeated aloud some words
whispered to me in a language I knew not: those words I would not trace
on this paper, could I remember them. As they came to a close, I heard
a howl from the watch-dog in the yard,--a dismal, lugubrious howl.
Other dogs in the distant village caught up the sound, and bayed in
a dirge-like chorus; and the howling went on louder and louder. Again
strange words were whispered to me, and I repeated them in mechanical
submission; and when they, too, were ended, I felt the ground tremble
beneath me, and as my eyes looked straight forward down the vista, that,
stretching from the casement, was bounded by the solitary mausoleum,
vague formless shadows seemed to pass across the moonlight,--below,
along the sward, above, in the air; and then suddenly a terror, not
before conceived, came upon me.

And a third time words were whispered; but though I knew no more of
their meaning than I did of those that had preceded them, I felt a
repugnance to utter them aloud. Mutely I turned towards the Scin-Laeca,
and the expression of its face was menacing and terrible; my will became
yet more compelled to the control imposed upon it, and my lips commenced
the formula again whispered into my ear, when I heard distinctly a voice
of warning and of anguish, that murmured "Hold!" I knew the voice; it
was Lilian's. I paused; I turned towards the quarter from which the
voice had come, and in the space afar I saw the features, the form
of Lilian. Her arms were stretched towards me in supplication, her
countenance was deadly pale, and anxious with unutterable distress. The
whole image seemed in unison with the voice,--the look, the attitude,
the gesture of one who sees another in deadly peril, and cries,
"Beware!"

This apparition vanished in a moment; but that moment sufficed to free
my mind from the constraint which had before enslaved it. I d