then that the strange appearance I had witnessed was probably the effect of the fitful candlelight, or an illusion of my own vision; but now I believe otherwise.  Seeing nothing further unusual in the picture, I turned my back upon it, and made a few steps towards the door, intending to quit this mysterious chamber of horrors, when a third and more hideous phenomenon riveted me to the spot where I stood; for, as I looked towards the oaken door in the corner, I became aware of something slowly filtering from beneath it, and creeping towards me.  O heaven!  I had not long to look to know what that something was:—­it was blood-red, thick, stealthy!  On it came, winding its way in a frightful stream into the room, soddening the rich carpet, and lying presently in a black pool at my feet.  It had trickled in from the adjoining chamber, that chamber the entrance to which was closed by the bookcase.  There were some great volumes on the ground before the door,—­volumes which I had noticed when I entered the room, on account of the thick dust with which they were surrounded.  They were lying now in a pool of stagnant blood.  It would be utterly impossible for me to attempt to describe my sensations at that minute.  I was not capable of feeling any distinct emotion.  My brain seemed oppressed, I could scarcely breathe—­scarcely move.  I watched the dreadful stream oozing drowsily through the crevices of the mouldy, rotting woodwork—­bulging out in great beads like raindrops on the sides of the door—­trickling noiselessly down the knots of the carved oak.  Still I stood and watched it, and it crept on slowly, slowly, like a living thing, and growing as it came, to my very feet.  I cannot say how long I might have stood there, fascinated by it, had not something suddenly occurred to startle me into my senses again; for full upon the back of my right hand fell, with a sullen, heavy sound, a second drop of blood.  It stung and burnt my flesh like molten lead, and the sharp, sudden pain it gave me shot up my arm and shoulder, and seemed in an instant to mount into my brain and pervade my whole being.  I turned and fled from the terrible place with a shrill cry that rang through the empty corridors and ghostly rooms like nothing human.  I did not recognise it for my own voice, so strange it was,—­so totally unlike its accustomed sound; and now, when I recall it, I am disposed to think it was surely not the cry of living mortal, but of that unknown Thing that passed before the portrait, and that stood beside me even then in the lonely room.  Certain I am that the echoes of that cry had in them something inexpressibly fiendish, and through the deathly gloom of the mansion they came back, reverberated and repeated from a hundred invisible corners and galleries.  Now, I had to pass, on my return, a long, broad window that lighted the principal staircase.  This window had neither shutters nor blind, and was