"Left alone, I looked with some curiosity round the gloomy oak-paneled chamber, where the fire-light flashed on the carved four-poster, with its faded yellow damask curtains, and lit up the moth-eaten tapestry that adorned a portion of the upper part of the walls, but scarcely illumined the dark corners which lay beyond. There were quaint old presses and chests roomy enough to hide a dozen ghosts in, and a portrait of a gentleman in the elaborate costume of the Stuart period seemed to look down upon me with strangely haunting eyes. "'A spooky enough place,' I murmured, 'hallowed by the spirits of numerous generations, no doubt. Well, I'll undertake they won't disturb me to-night, for I am dog-tired and mean to sleep like a log.' "I am an old traveler, and was soon in bed and enjoying a well-earned slumber, but my dreams were wild, for I seemed now to be driving furiously over the moorland, pursuing ever the phantom of pretty Bessie, who, with her bewitching smile, was luring me into the fog and darkness, and now to be barring the front door to defend her from some unknown assailant, whose perpetual rapping rang like an echo through my brain. With the impotent strength of dreamland I struggled vainly to close the door, which was opening slowly to admit the nameless horror. I seemed to feel a hot breath on my cheek, and with a wild shriek I woke, to find the moonlight streaming in through the broad diamond-paned window, falling in a white shaft across the floor, while the last embers of the fire were smoldering to ashes upon the hearth. "I sat up in bed with that feeling of broad awakeness and alertness which comes to us sometimes, and caught my breath as I listened, for through the stillness of the night came the unmistakable sound of a gentle tapping from behind the paneling of the wall. It was not continuous, but more as one might rap at the chamber door of a sleeping person, waiting every now and then to hear if one had obtained a response. An intense and vivid sensation came over me that I was not alone in the room; that there was some presence other than my own personality which was striving in some way to force itself upon my consciousness and arrest my attention. Was it only my fancy, or were the moonbeams actually shaping themselves into a human form, till against the dark background of the fireplace, I seemed to see the misty shadowy outline of a figure, so vague and ethereal that even as I looked it appeared to melt again into the moonlight and cease to exist?