before the portrait, and fixed his eyes upon it again, but only for a moment, to resume his walk.  This he did repeatedly, until at last, with a groan, he dropped into a chair, where, crossing his arms upon his breast, he remained for awhile lost in thought.  Who can say what were the reflections that filled his mind?  Was he considering whether the painter meant to delineate insanity, or whether it was not a delusion springing from his own disordered intellect?

It was a long time before sleep visited the Solitary in his soft and curtained bed.  It might be owing to the events of the day, so startling and unusual; it might be on account of the yielding bed, so different from his own hard couch; or in consequence of the effect produced by the portrait; or of all these causes combined, that sleep was long in coming, and when it did come, was disturbed with dreams, and unrefreshing.  Before, however, Holden fell asleep, he had lain, as if under the influence of a spell, looking at the picture on which the beams of the moon, stealing through the branches of the large elm that shaded the house, flickered uncertainly and with a sort of wierd effect, as the night wind gently agitated the leaves.

It seemed to Holden, so insensibly glided his last waking thought into his dreams making one continuous whole, that the portrait he had been looking at was a living person, and he was astonished that he had mistaken a living being for a piece of painted canvas.  In a stern, deep voice the man who had taken possession of the chair in which he himself had been sitting, ordered him to approach.  If Holden had been so disposed, he had no ability to disobey the command.  He, therefore advanced towards the figure, and at a signal knelt down at his feet.  The man, thereupon, stretching out his hands, laid them upon his head in the attitude of benediction.  He then rose from his seat, and making a sign to Holden to follow him, they noiselessly descended the stairs together, and passed into the moonlight.  The man constantly preceding him, they went on, and by familiar paths and roads, and in the ordinary time that would be required to accomplish the distance, arrived at a spot on the banks of the Wootuppocut well known to Holden.  Here the stranger stopped, and seating himself upon the trunk of a felled tree, motioned to his companion to be seated.  Holden obeyed, waiting for what should follow.  Presently he saw two figures, a male and female, approaching.  The latter was veiled, and although the face of the man was exposed, it swam in such a hazy indistinctness that it was impossible to make out the features.  Still it seemed to him that they were not entirely unknown, and he tormented himself with ineffectual attempts to determine where he had seen them.  He turned to his guide to ask who they were, but before he could speak the stranger of the portrait placed his fingers on his lips, as if to require silence.  The two persons advanced until they reached a small brook that babbled down a ravine, and fell into the river.  Suddenly something glittered in the air; the figures vanished; and upon looking at the brook Holden beheld, to his horror, that it was red like blood.  He turned in amazement to his guide, who made no reply to the look of inquiry, unless the word “Friday,” which he uttered in the same deep tone, can be so considered.