As for me, I went off to bed. But my mind was in a confused whirl. For to me the story was more than a story. The thing had taken on a colour of reality. I knew it was no mere tale, but a truth; and a truth which was somehow of the utmost moment to my father and myself. For throughout the narrative many pictures had woven themselves into my thoughts. I could see the Mad Captain as my father had envisaged him to me that night in the woods; and I saw the curse not as an abstract thing, but as a concrete reality, embodied in that dreadful hag who had pursued us to the hut. I could see her slipping back the knife into the folds of her dress, waiting to spring. I could see her feeling for me in the straw and behind the cloak. And again the red flames lit up those terrible eye-balls of hers in their black hollow sockets. She became for me not a creature of flesh and blood, but a curse embodied; a thing that couldn't be killed by powder or by fire. And then old words of my father's came back to me: "Shadow-of-Fear can never die." I seemed to understand as I had never understood before the meaning of the destiny which had enmeshed us. For there was no doubt of it now. I knew my father was seeking for that unhallowed gold; perhaps he had even found it, for I remembered of a sudden the words of the host of the _Snow Man_ saying my father had given him a purse in compensation for his loss as though he had been a lord. The curse was certainly upon us; it was that, and no mere earthly enemy, that was hounding us from place to place. And as though in confirmation of my fears, throughout the course of the story, in letters that glowed ever brighter and more menacing, shuddered the words as though written in blood: MALEDICTUS SIT THESAURUS. White as were the faces of some of my companions, my face must have been whiter still; for I remember how shaken I felt as I crept upstairs to the great dark bedroom, walking slowly so that my candle might throw its light the farther into the blackness ahead; and how entering the room, and passing round to my side of the bed, I came with a shock of horror face to face with my spectral self in the great mirror. I remember how my nerves seemed to freeze into sudden numbness, for my eyes were staring fearfully and my face was drawn and white, so that at first I didn't know myself. And then the blood gushed back to my heart, enough almost to choke me; and setting down the candle I sat on the bed and gazed at myself in the glass, shaking as though in a fever.