He did not attempt to describe his sensations as these figures passed so near him.  He merely said, that so far from sleeping in that room again, no consideration the world could offer would induce him so much as to enter it again alone, even in the daylight.  He found both doors, that of the closet, and that of the room opening upon the lobby, in the morning fast locked as he had left them before going to bed.

[Illustration:  These two figures crossed the floor diagonally, passing the foot of the bed.]

In answer to a question of mine, he said that neither appeared the least conscious of his presence.  They did not seem to glide, but walked as living men do, but without any sound, and he felt a vibration on the floor as they crossed it.  He so obviously suffered from speaking about the apparitions, that I asked him no more questions.

There were in his description, however, certain coincidences so very singular, as to induce me, by that very post, to write to a friend much my senior, then living in a remote part of England, for the information which I knew he could give me.  He had himself more than once pointed out that old house to my attention, and told me, though very briefly, the strange story which I now asked him to give me in greater detail.

His answer satisfied me; and the following pages convey its substance.

Your letter (he wrote) tells me you desire some particulars about the closing years of the life of Mr. Justice Harbottle, one of the judges of the Court of Common Pleas.  You refer, of course, to the extraordinary occurrences that made that period of his life long after a theme for “winter tales” and metaphysical speculation.  I happen to know perhaps more than any other man living of those mysterious particulars.

The old family mansion, when I revisited London, more than thirty years ago, I examined for the last time.  During the years that have passed since then, I hear that improvement, with its preliminary demolitions, has been doing wonders for the quarter of Westminster in which it stood.  If I were quite certain that the house had been taken down, I should have no difficulty about naming the street in which it stood.  As what I have to tell, however, is not likely to improve its letting value, and as I should not care to get into trouble, I prefer being silent on that particular point.

How old the house was, I can’t tell.  People said it was built by Roger Harbottle, a Turkey merchant, in the reign of King James I. I am not a good opinion upon such questions; but having been in it, though in its forlorn and deserted state, I can tell you in a general way what it was like.  It was built of dark-red brick, and the door and windows were faced with stone that had turned yellow by time.  It receded some feet from the line of the other houses in the street; and it had a florid and fanciful rail of iron about the broad steps that invited your ascent