Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PHANTOMS FOR a long time I could not get to sleep, and kept turning from side to side. ' Confound this foolishness about table-turning!' I thought. ' It simply upsets one's nerves.' . . . Drowsiness began to overtake me at last. . . . Suddenly it seemed to me as though there were the faint and plaintive sound of a harp- string in the room. I raised my head. The moon was low in the sky, and looked me straight in the face. White as chalk lay its light upon the floor. . . . The strange sound was distinctly repeated. I leaned on my elbow. A faint feeling of awe plucked at my heart. A minute passed, another. . . . Somewhere, far away, a cock crowed ; another answered still more remote. I let my head sink back on the pillow. ' See what one can work oneself up to,' I thought again, . . . ' there's a singing in my ears.' After a little while I fell asleep—or I thought I fell asleep. I had an extraordinary dream. I fancied I was lying in my room, in my bed— and was not asleep, could not even close my eyes. And again I heard the sound. ... I turned over. . . . The moonlight on the floor began softly to lift, to rise up, to round off slightly above. . . . Before me, impalpable as mist, a white woman was standing motionless. ' Who are you ?' I asked with an effort. A voice made answer, like the rustle of leaves:' It is I ... I ... I ... I have come for you.' ' For me ? But who are you ?' ' Come by night to the edge of the wood where there stands an old oak-tree. I will be there.' I tried to look closely into the face of the mysterious woman—and suddenly I gave an involuntary shudder: there was a chilly breath upon me. And then I was not lying down, but sitting up in my bed ; and where, as I fancied, the phantom had stood, the moonlight lay in a long streak of ...