and his eyes—merciful Heavens! what eyes they were!—threatening, sullen, restless, impossible to catch, and his eyebrows scowling till they met. And his lips were for ever twitching. Ah, what had become of my James, the innocent little fellow? Hasn't he lost his mind? I sometimes thought. He wandered about like a spectre, did not sleep at night, would suddenly look in a corner and grow rigid, so that your blood would run cold. He had threatened to leave the house if I didn't leave him alone, but after all I was his father. My last hope was shattered, and I was to keep silence? Oh no! So one day, having chosen my time well, I began to entreat my James with tears in the name of his departed mother: "James, tell me, as your actual and spiritual father, what ails you? Don't make me die. Tell me your secret: unburden your heart. Have you not injured some one? In that case confess it."
"Well, father," he burst out—and this conversation took place about nightfall—"you have moved me: I am going to tell you all the truth. I have injured no one. My soul is perishing."
"How so?"
"I will tell you;" and then he raised his eyes to mine for the first time for four months.
"For four months—" he began. But at this point his voice failed him and he breathed uneasily.
"Four months, do you say? What else? Speak! do not keep me waiting."
"It is now four months that I keep seeing him."
"Him? whom?"
"I mean him whom one don't like to mention when it's growing dark."
I grew cold from head to foot and began to tremble. "What him?" I asked. "Do you see him?"
"Yes."
"Do you see him now?"
"Yes."
"Whom?" At the same time I was afraid to look round, and we both talked in a low tone.
"There, over there;" and with his eyes he indicated the place—"over there."
I made a mighty effort and looked at the place: there was nothing there. "But, James, there is nothing there. For Heaven's sake—"
"You don't see him, but I do."
I looked again, but there was still nothing there. I then remembered the little old man of the woods who had given him a chestnut.
"What color is he? green?"
"No, not green—black."
"With horns?"
"No. He is like men, except that he is all black." While speaking his upper lip was drawn above his teeth, he had become as pale as death, he leaned against me, and his eyes seemed starting from his head.
"But that is only an apparition," I said. "It is the darkness of some shadow you see, and you mistake it for a man."
"No, indeed it isn't. I see his eyes. There! he's moving them: he's raising his arm, making a sign."
"Stop, stop, James! don't give way to this. I'll burn incense, pray and sprinkle you from head to foot with holy water."
James stopped me with a gesture: "I don't believe in your incense or your holy water: it's all not worth a farthing. I shall never be free of him. Since he first came to me one day, one summer's day—accursed day!—he is my continual visitor, and I can't get rid of him. Understand this, my father: don't be surprised any longer at my conduct, and don't torment me any more."
"What day was it he first came?" I asked, continually signing my son with the cross. "Was it not the day you wrote me about your doubts?"
James pushed aside my hand: "Leave me. Don't make me angry, lest something worse should happen. It would not take much to drive me to desperation."
You can imagine, sir, what I felt in hearing that. I remember I wept all that night. "O Lord God!" thought I, "how have I incurred thy wrath?"
At this point Alexis drew from his pocket a great chequered pocket handkerchief, and while blowing his nose tried to dry his eyes with a corner of it.
Very sad—he resumed—was the life
