surprize and amazement of those who held her, she changed suddenly in shape, and when she died, it was not the Damsel Susanne they held, but a twisted cat.
The duke was brave, but for all his bravery he fainted.
When he came to his senses, he found that a large fire had been built and the cat was searing amid the flames. There was nothing to do but to stumble back to the castle.
The Lady Arabella told her husband that she had sat by the side of her daughter holding a golden cross in her hands and praying. At a certain time the damsel had screamed, sat up in bed, and then dropped backward. The mother and the old nurse thought she was dead, but her regular breathing soon showed the return of life. The rest of the night they spent in the bed¬room, one on each side of their beloved daughter, holding her hands.
The morning dawned, a lovely rose.
The damsel, waking, called for food. When milk was brought to her she drank it eagerly but complained that it hurt her to swallow. Then she fell asleep.
In the daylight they saw a red cross on her forehead.
On her neck were the livid marks of fingertips.
WEIRD STORY
REPRINT
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FROM a very early period of my life the entire bent of my inclinations had been towards microscopic investigations. When I was not more than ten years old, a distant relative of our family, hoping to astonish my inexperience, constructed a simple microscope for me, by drilling in a disk of copper a small hole, in which a drop of pure water was sustained by capillary attraction. This very primitive apparatus, magnifying some fifty diameters, presented, it is true, only indistinct and imperfect forms, but still sufficiently wonderful to work up my imagination to a preternatural state of excitement.
Seeing me so interested in this rude instrument, my cousin explained to me all that he knew about the principles of the microscope, related to me a few of the wonders which had been accomplished through its agency,
- ↑ This story, published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1858, was the first of the great weird-scientific stories. It won immediate popularity for the author—popularity which continued unbroken until his death in the Civil War.
