The figure stood motionless. Thinking it made a low hollow laugh, the young student struck at the intruder with his sword, but the weapon met with no resistance, and not a single drop of blood stained it. This was amazing, and still no answer. Determined to solve the mystery of this strange being, he cast aside its cloak, when lo! "he saw his own apparition, bloody and ghostly, whereat he was so astonished that he immediately swooned away, but, recovering, he saw the spectre depart." At first this occurrence left the most unpleasant impressions on his mind, but as days passed by without anything happening, the warning, or whatever it was, faded gradually from his memory, and he lived as before, drinking and quarrelling, managing to embroil himself at play with the celebrated Beau Fielding. The day at last came, however, when his equanimity was disturbed, for, as he was walking from his chambers in Lincoln's Inn to a favourite tavern in the Strand, he imagined that he was followed by an ungainly looking man. He tried to avoid him, but the man followed on, and after a time, fully convinced that he was dogged by this man, he demanded "Who he was, and why he followed him?" [Illustration: THE FIGURE STOOD MOTIONLESS.] But the man replied, "I am not following you; I'm following my own business." By no means satisfied, young Perceval crossed over to the opposite side of the street, but the man followed him step by step, and before many minutes had elapsed he was joined by another man as ungainly-looking as himself. Perceval, no longer doubting that he was followed, called upon the two men to retire at their peril, and although he succeeded in making them take to their heels after a sharp sword skirmish, he was himself wounded in the leg, and made his way to the nearest tavern. This unpleasant encounter, reviving the memory of the ghastly figure he had seen in his chambers, made him feel that he was a doomed man, and he was not far wrong, for that night near the so-called May-pole in the Strand he was found dead--but how he died was a secret never divulged. Another equally strange incident connected with this mysterious crime happened to a Mrs. Brown, "perhaps from her holding some situation in the family of his uncle, Sir Robert." On this fatal night, writes Sir Bernard Burke, she dreamt that one Mrs. Shearman--the housekeeper--came to her and asked for a sheet. She demanded, "for what purpose," to which Mrs. Shearman replied, "Poor Master Robert is killed, and it is to wind him in." Curious to say, in the morning Mrs. Shearman came at an early hour into her room, and asked for a sheet. For what purpose? inquired Mrs Brown. "Poor Mr. Robert is murdered," was the reply; "he lies dead in the Strand watch-house, and it is to wind his body in."