A hundred times I have been sorry that I kept the thing, but never more so than now.
How the wind howls and the pines screech above me! A pailful of snow, plunging down my chimney, sends the chills up my spine as if it were the very devil himself, and the steam of it surges out and upward and hides the skull.

It is absurd to go to bed, to make an effort to sleep, for I know what my dreams would be.

To-night they would be filled with this skull--and with visions of a face, a woman's face-- Thus far had Steele written, when with a nervous laugh he sprang from his chair, and with something that sounded very near to an oath, in the wild tumult of the storm, crumpled the paper in his hand and flung it among the blazing logs he had described but a few moments before.
"Confound it, this will never do!" he exclaimed, falling into his own peculiar habit of communing with himself.

"I say it won't do, Phil Steele; deuce take it if it will! You're getting nervous, sentimental, almost homesick.

Ugh, what a beast of a night!" He turned to the rude stone fireplace again as another blast of snow plunged down the chimney.
"Wish I'd built a fire in the stove instead of there," he went on, filling his pipe.