spectre. The hag made, as it seemed, a single and swift stride to the
bed where I lay, and squatted herself down upon it, in precisely the
same attitude which I had assumed in the extremity of horror, advancing
her diabolical countenance within half a yard of mine, with a grin which
seemed to intimate the malice and the derision of an incarnate fiend."

Here General Browne stopped, and wiped from his brow the cold
perspiration with which the recollection of his horrible vision had
covered it.

"My lord," he said, "I am no coward, I have been in all the mortal
dangers incidental to my profession, and I may truly boast that no man
ever knew Richard Browne dishonour the sword he wears; but in these
horrible circumstances, under the eyes, and, as it seemed, almost in the
grasp of an incarnation of an evil spirit, all firmness forsook me,
all manhood melted from me like wax in the furnace, and I felt my hair
individually bristle. The current of my life-blood ceased to flow, and
I sank back in a swoon, as very a victim to panic terror as ever was
a village girl, or a child of ten years old. How long I lay in this
condition I cannot pretend to guess.

"But I was roused by the castle clock striking one, so loud that it
seemed as if it were in the very room. It was some time before I dared
open my eyes, lest they should again encounter the horrible spectacle.
When, however, I summoned courage to look up, she was no longer visible.
My first idea was to pull my bell, wake the servants, and remove to a
garret or a hay-loft, to be ensured against a second visitation. Nay, I
will confess the truth that my resolution was altered, not by the shame
of exposing myself, but by the fear that, as the bell-cord hung by
the chimney, I might, in making my way to it, be again crossed by the
fiendish hag, who, I figured to myself, might be still lurking about
some corner of the apartment.

"I will not pretend to describe what hot and cold fever-fits tormented
me for the rest of the night, through broken sleep, weary vigils,
and that dubious state which forms the neutral ground between them. A
hundred terrible objects appeared to haunt me; but there was the great
difference betwixt the vision which I have described, and those which
followed, that I knew the last to be deceptions of my own fancy and
over-excited nerves.

"Day at last appeared, and I rose from my bed ill in health and
humiliated in mind. I was ashamed of myself as a man and a