I lay there I felt a consciousness creeping over me that there was something coming stealthily behind my back. Involuntarily I turned my head. Close to me, the soft brown-bearded chin leaning on the back of the sofa, was a man's head. I felt his breath on my cheek as I turned my face, and his strange sad grey eyes seemed to look me through and through. I started up and faced him—he was gone. Gone. Utterly vanished. Where had he gone to? Ah, that was the mystery; unless he had sank down through the floor, which seemed as firm as strong boards could make it.
"Well," I thought to myself, "certainly this is a house of odd inmates. If the fellow had only told me his story before he disappeared in that absurd way—" and, rousing up the fire, which was beginning to get low, I half expected to see him back again when I had completed a scientific arrangement of the logs. But there was nothing. I went over to the window. The night was dark and cloudy, and the wind sighed a plaintive lament now and then. I tried to open the sash, but I found that it had been nailed down, so, as it was but stupid work staring out at the elements, I sauntered presently back to my sofa, my hands in my pockets, determined to woo old Morpheus as the last resource of ennui.
"If it were only morning," I thought, "I would make another trial at that confounded hall door." "Ah, you will never leave this house," slowly whispered a low sad voice in startling proximity to my ear. "Indeed!" I said, not eating this time to take the trouble to move (you see I had got to consider the unusual quite as a matter of course), "may I ask why?" But there was no answer. As I lay there on the sofa, with closed eyes, I knew there was a form close to me, that if I looked I should see some shape, but a strange reluctance seemed to prevent my doing so—a presentiment of evil, an indefinable horror, thrilled strangely through me, but I struggled against it and forced myself to look. For an instant I got a glimpse of the bearded face and sad grey eyes I had seen before leaning over me; then, I felt stifling, powerless; I knew that pitiless torso was slowly, surely, smotheringly, crushing down upon me, and that there was no escape. Closer and closer still it came stealthily on, and gasping for breath Iawoke from my dream, to find myself lying on my back on the sofa, the old brown snuffing at my face, and the bright May sun shining in through the opposite window.
Didn't I tell you that I "suspected I fell asleep" in front of the fire? O.
THE DIRGE OF DE CLARE
The family of De Clare, sprang from the Dukes of Normandy, had large possessions and great influence in the West of England, and eventually extended their power into many parts of Wales. One of them, Walter, who died in 1131, was the founder of Tintern Abbey. Of Richard Fitz-Gilbert (De Glare) it is related that, returning into Gwent (Monmouthshire), from his estates in Cardigan, unarmed, and accompanied only by his minstrel and singer, he was suddenly set upon in a mountainous pass, called Coed Grono, a few miles from Abergavenny, and treacherously slain. The place is still known as Coed Dial, i.e., Wood of Revenge.
Dark are thy woods, Coed Grono;
Lonely and bare.
Deep in thy shades, Coed Grono,
A granite block, no common block, I swear,
Marks where low lie,
Waiting Eternity,
The bones of the Norman, Richard De Clare.
Fair was that eve, Coed Grono,
When under the shade
The knight and his minstrels
Rode down through thy glade;
The chaunt of the gleeman
Rang clear through the wood,
And the harper, responsive,
Kept time to his mood;
Till the knight,
In delight,
Let his good steed pace on,
Whilst on him and his day-dreams
Love and victory shone.
First they sang the wild songs
Of the Vikings, who bore
Their conquering banners
To Neustria's shore,
When Rollo, triumphant
By field and by flood,
Sowed the thrones of great empires
In furrows of blood:
Then erect grew his head,
And, with fire in his eye,
All the warrior woke in him,
To conquer or die;
But a change in the lay
Drove the fire-look away,
And his forehead sank low,
And his cheek was aglow,
As, softly and sweetly,
Came Love for their theme,
And Beauty, all-worshipped,
Was Queen of his dream.
Till bright rose the moon, Coed Grono,
On the points of thy leaves;
And the points of the spears, Coed Grono
(Still Beauty deceives),
That lurked in the bushes and through the dim light,
Murd'rously flew at the fearless breast,
Happy in day-dreams, happy in rest,
Of Richard, the peerless knight.
Cursed be thy woods, Coed Grono,
Shattered and bare
Every trunk in thy sod, Coed Grono;
For, lo! what is there?—
Three riderless steeds
