“That awful scene was always before me. I saw this devoted man day after day, with the eyes of my imagination, sometimes destroying in his rage the harmless looking-glass, which was the immediate cause of his suffering, sometimes transfixed before the horrid image that turned him to stone. I recollect coming upon him once when we were stopping at a roadside inn, and seeing him stand so by broad daylight. His back was turned towards me, and I waited and watched him for nearly half an hour as he stood there motionless and speechless, and appearing not to breathe. I am not sure but that this apparition seen so by daylight was more ghastly than that apparition seen in the middle of the night, with the thunder rumbling among the hills. “Back in London in his own house, where he could command in some sort the objects which should surround him, poor Strange was better than he would have been elsewhere. He seldom went out except at night, but once or twice I have walked with him by daylight, and have seen him terribly agitated when we have had to pass a shop in which looking-glasses were exposed for sale. “It is nearly a year now since my poor friend followed me down to this place, to which I have retired. For some months he has been daily getting weaker and weaker, and a disease of the lungs has become developed in him, which has brought him to his death-bed. I should add, by-the-by, that John Masey has been his constant companion ever since I brought them together, and I have had, consequently, to look after a new servant. “And now tell me,” the doctor added, bringing his tale to an end, “did you ever hear a more miserable history, or was ever man haunted in a more ghastly manner than this man?” I was about to reply when I heard a sound of footsteps outside, and before I could speak old Masey entered the room, in haste and disorder. “I was just telling this gentleman,” the doctor said: not at the moment observing old Masey’s changed manner: “how you deserted me to go over to your present master.” “Ah! sir,” the man answered, in a troubled voice, “I’m afraid he won’t be my master long.” The doctor was on his legs in a moment. “What! Is he worse?” “I think, sir, he is dying,” said the old man. “Come with me, sir; you may be of use if you can keep quiet.” The doctor caught up his hat as he addressed me in those words, and in a few minutes we had reached The Compensation House. A few seconds more, and we were standing in a darkened room on the first floor, and I saw lying on a bed before me—pale, emaciated, and, as it seemed, dying—the man whose story I had just heard.