The attention of the company was immediately turned to me; if my face had been pale the moment before, it now glowed almost to burning.  I tried to laugh, but could only make a grimace; and found all the muscles of my face twitching at sixes and sevens, and totally out of all control.

It takes but little to raise a laugh among a set of fox-hunters.  There was a world of merriment and joking at my expense; and as I never relished a joke overmuch when it was at my own expense, I began to feel a little nettled.  I tried to look cool and calm and to restrain my pique; but the coolness and calmness of a man in a passion are confounded treacherous.

Gentlemen, said I, with a slight cocking of the chin, and a bad attempt at a smile, this is all very pleasant—­ha! ha!—­very pleasant—­but I’d have you know I am as little superstitious as any of you—­ha! ha!—­and as to anything like timidity—­you may smile, gentlemen—­but I trust there is no one here means to insinuate that.—­As to a room’s being haunted, I repeat, gentlemen—­(growing a little warm at seeing a cursed grin breaking out round me)—­as to a room’s being haunted, I have as little faith in such silly stories as any one.  But, since you put the matter home to me, I will say that I have met with something in my room strange and inexplicable to me—­(a shout of laughter).  Gentlemen, I am serious—­I know well what I am saying—­I am calm, gentlemen, (striking my flat upon the table)—­by heaven I am calm.  I am neither trifling, nor do I wish to be trifled with—­(the laughter of the company suppressed with ludicrous attempts at gravity).  There is a picture in the room in which I was put last night, that has had an effect upon me the most singular and incomprehensible.

“A picture!” said the old gentleman with the haunted head.  “A picture!” cried the narrator with the waggish nose.  “A picture! a picture!” echoed several voices.  Here there was an ungovernable peal of laughter.

I could not contain myself.  I started up from my seat—­looked round on the company with fiery indignation—­thrust both my hands into my pockets, and strode up to one of the windows, as though I would have walked through it.  I stopped short; looked out upon the landscape without distinguishing a feature of it; and felt my gorge rising almost to suffocation.

Mine host saw it was time to interfere.  He had maintained an air of Gravity through the whole of the scene, and now stepped forth as if to shelter me from the overwhelming merriment of my companions.

“Gentlemen,” said he, “I dislike to spoil sport, but you have had your laugh, and the joke of the haunted chamber has been enjoyed.  I must now take the part of my guest.  I must not only vindicate him from your pleasantries, but I must reconcile him to himself, for I suspect he is a little out of humor with his own feelings; and above all, I must crave his pardon for having made him the subject of a kind of experiment.