mewhat
lengthened brooding over the dying embers in the open fireplace, I
lay down behind the curtains of the huge bed, I found myself as far
from sleep as I had ever been in my whole life.

"And I did not recover from this condition for the entire night.
For hours I tossed from one side of the bed to the other in my
efforts to avoid the persistent eyes of a scarcely-to-be-perceived
drawing facing me from the opposite wall. It had no merit as a
picture, this drawing, but seen as it was under the rays of a
gibbous moon looking in through the half-open shutter, it exercised
upon me a spell such as I can not describe and hope never again to
experience. Finally I rose and pulled the curtains violently
together across the foot of the bed. This shut out the picture;
but I found it worse to imagine it there with its haunting eyes
peering at me through the intervening folds of heavy damask than
to confront it openly; so I pushed the curtains back again, only
to rise a half-hour later and twitch them desperately together
once more.

"I fidgeted and worried so that night that I must have looked quite
pale when my attentive hostess met me at the head of the stairs the
next morning. For her hand shook quite perceptibly as she grasped
mine, and her voice was pitched in no natural key as she inquired
how I had slept. I replied, as truth, if not courtesy, demanded,
'Not as well as usual,' whereupon her eyes fell and she remarked
quite hurriedly; 'I am so sorry; you shall have another room
tonight,' adding, in what appeared to be an unconscious whisper:
'There is no use; all feel it; even the young and the gay;' then
aloud and with irrepressible anxiety: 'You didn't see anything,
dear?'

"'No!' I protested in suddenly awakened dismay; 'only the strange
eyes of that queer drawing peering at me through the curtains of my
bed. Is it--is it a haunted room?'

"Her look was a shocked one, her protest quite vehement. 'Oh, no!
No one has ever witnessed anything like a ghost there, but every
one finds it impossible to sleep in that bed or even in the room.
I do not know why, unless it is that my father spent so many weary
years of incessant wakefulness inside its walls.'

"'And did he die in that bed?' I asked.

"She gave a startled shiver, and drew me hurriedly downstairs. As
we paused at the foot, she pressed my hand and whispered:

"'Yes; at night; with the full of the moon upon him.'

"I answered her look with one she pro