“Oh, you are too ingenious—­too full of well laid schemes, and to apt and ready in their execution, to feel, as any fearful drag, the conditions of our bargain.  Why do you look at me so earnestly?”

“Because,” said Varney—­and he trembled as he spoke—­“because each lineament of your countenance brings me back to the recollection of the only scene in life that made me shudder, and which I cannot think of, even with the indifference of contempt.  I see it all before my mind’s eye, coming in frightful panoramic array, those incidents, which even to dream of, are sufficient to drive the soul to madness; the dread of this annual visit, hangs upon me like a dark cloud upon my very heart; it sits like some foul incubus, destroying its vitality and dragging me, from day to day, nearer to that tomb, from whence not as before, I can emerge.”

“You have been among the dead?” said the stranger.

“I have.”

“And yet are mortal.”

“Yes,” repeated Varney, “yes, and yet am mortal.”

“It was I that plucked you back to that world, which, to judge from your appearance, has had since that eventful period but few charms for you.  By my faith you look like—­”

“Like what I am,” interrupted Varney.

“This is a subject that once a year gets frightfully renewed between us.  For weeks before your visit I am haunted by frightful recollections, and it takes me many weeks after you are gone, before I can restore myself to serenity.  Look at me; am I not an altered man?”

“In faith you are,” said the stranger “I have no wish to press upon you painful recollections.  And yet ’tis strange to me that upon such a man as you, the event to which you allude should produce so terrible an impression.”

“I have passed through the agony of death,” said Varney, “and have again endured the torture—­for it is such—­of the re-union of the body and the soul; not having endured so much, not the faintest echo of such feelings can enter into your imagination.”

“There may be truth in that, and yet, like a fluttering moth round a flame, it seems to me, that when I do see you, you take a terrific kind of satisfaction in talking of the past.”

“That is strictly true,” said Varney; “the images with which my mind is filled are frightful.  Pent up do they remain for twelve long months.  I can speak to you, and you only, without disguise, and thus does it seem to me that I get rid of the uneasy load of horrible imaginings.  When you are gone, and have been gone a sufficient lapse of time, my slumbers are not haunted with frightful images—­I regain a comparative peace, until the time slowly comes around again, when we are doomed to meet.”

“I understand you.  You seem well lodged here?”

“I have ever kept my word, and sent to you, telling you where I am.”

“You have, truly.  I have no shadow of complaint to make against you.  No one, could have more faithfully performed his bond than you have.  I give you ample credit for all that, and long may you live still to perform your conditions.”