One of his hands, still clutching a pistol, has fallen to his side; the other presses a bloody handkerchief over his mouth.

The spasm of mortal agony convulses his features; but I know them for the features of a swarthy man who twice frightened me by taking me up in his arms when I was a child at Wincot Abbey.

I asked the nurses at the time who that man was, and they told me it was my uncle, Stephen Monkton.

Plainly, as if he stood there living, I see him now at your side, with the death-glare in his great black eyes; and so have I ever seen him, since the moment when he was shot; at home and abroad, waking or sleeping, day and night, we are always together, wherever I go!" His whispering tones sank into almost inaudible murmuring as he pronounced these last words.

From the direction and expression of his eyes, I suspected that he was speaking to the apparition.