[Illustration:  PAGE 652—­ I will follow it until morning]

“I will follow it until morning,” he said to himself, “or else I shall develop this startling enigma.”

At this moment his mysterious fellow-traveller, after having advanced as if there had not been such an individual as Woodward in existence, now stood; he was directly opposite the haunted house, and turning round, faced the tantalized and bewildered mortal.  The latter looked on him; his countenance was the countenance of the dead—­of the sheeted dead, stretched out in the bloodless pallor which lies upon the face of vanished life—­of existence that is no more, at least in flesh and blood.  Woodward approached him—­for the thing had stood, as we have said, and permitted, him to come within a few yards from him.  His eyes were cold and glassy, and apparently without speculation, like those of a dead man open; yet, notwithstanding this, Woodward felt that they looked at him, if not into him.

“Speak,” said he, “speak; who or what are you?”

He received no reply; but in a few seconds the apparition, if it were such, put his hand into his bosom, and, pulling out a dagger, which gleamed with a faint and visionary light, he directed it as if to his (Woodward’s) heart.  Three times he did this, in an attitude more of warning than of anger, when, at length, he turned and approached the haunted house, at the door of which he disappeared.

Woodward, as the reader must have perceived, was a strong-minded, fearless man, and examined the awful features of this inscrutable being closely.

“This, then,” thought he, “is the Shan-dhinne-dhuv, or the Black Spectre; but, be it what it may, I am strongly of opinion that it was present at the bonfire last night, and as I am well armed, I will unquestionably pursue it into the house.  Nay, what is more, I suspect that it is in some way or I other connected with the outlaw Shawn-na-Middogue, who it was, they say, made that amazing leap over the aforesaid bonfire in my own presence.”

On that very account, however, he reflected that such an intrusion might be attended with more danger than that to be apprehended from a ghost.  He consequently paused for some time before he could decide on following up such a perilous resolution.  While he thus stood deliberating upon the prudence of this daring exploit, he heard a variety of noises, and knockings, and rollings, as if of empty barrels, and rattling of chains, all going on inside, whilst the house itself appeared to be dark and still, without smoke from the chimneys, or light in the windows, or any other symptom of being inhabited, unless by those who were producing the wild and extraordinary noises he then heard.

“If I do not see this out,” said he, “my account of it will go to add another page to the great volume of superstition.  I am armed, not a whit afraid, and I will see it out, if human enterprise can effect it.”