chamber, with some old mouldy books packed closely together on a few of its shelves.  This piece of furniture was hollowed out, crescent-wise, at the base, and partially concealed a carved oaken door, which had evidently in former times been the means of communication with an adjoining apartment.  Prompted by curiosity, I took down and opened a few of the nearest books on the shelves before me.  They proved to be some of the very earliest volumes of the “Spectator,”—­books of considerable interest to me,—­ and in ten minutes I was quite absorbed in an article by one of our most noted masters of literature.  I drew one of the queer high-backed chairs scattered about the room, towards the table, and sat down to enjoy a “feast of reason and a flow of soul.”  As I turned the mildewed page, something suddenly fell with a dull “flop” upon the paper.  It was a drop of blood!  I stared at it with a strange sensation of mingled horror and astonishment.  Could it have been upon the page before I turned it?  No; it was wet and bright, and presented the uneven, broken disc which drops of liquid always possess when they fall from a considerable height.  Besides I had heard and seen it fall.  I put the book down on the table and looked upward at the ceiling.  There was nothing visible there save the grey dirt of years.  I looked closely at the hideous blotch, and saw it rapidly soaking and widening its way into the paper, already softened with age.  As, of course, after this incident I was not inclined to continue my studies of Addison and Steele, I shut the volume and replaced it on the shelves.  Turning back towards the table to take up my candle, my eyes rested upon a full-length portrait immediately facing the bookcase.  It was that of a young and handsome woman with glossy black hair coiled round her head, but, I thought, with something repulsive in the proud, stony face and shadowed eyes.  I raised the light above my head to get a better view of the painting.  As I did this, it seemed to me that the countenance of the figure changed, or rather that a Thing came between me and it.  It was a momentary distortion, as though a gust of wind had passed across the portrait and disturbed the outline of the features; the how and the why I know not, but the face changed; nor shall I ever forget the sudden horror of the look it assumed.  It was like that face of phantom ghastliness that we see sometimes in the delirium of fever,—­the face that meets us and turns upon us in the mazes of nightmare, with a look that wakes us in the darkness, and drives the cold sweat out upon our forehead while we lie still and hold our breath for fear.  Man as I was, I shuddered convulsively from head to foot, and fixed my eyes earnestly on the terrible portrait.  In a minute it was a mere picture again—­an inanimate colored canvas—­wearing no expression upon its painted features save that which the artist had given to it nearly a century ago.  I thought