Oh! when I heard that "Cuckoo!" a cold perspiration formed on my forehead; but suddenly the woman disappeared and then I realized that it was only a dream.
The next evening a tall thin man, clothed in the black dress of a minister, appeared to me.

He did not come near me, but kept close to the wall and whirled, with body all bent over, rapidly and noiselessly about the room.

His miserable, thin legs and the gown of his dress stood out stiff and straight as he turned quickly.

And--most horrible of all--he had for a head the skull of a large white bird with a long beak, which was a monstrous exaggeration of a sea-mew's skull, bleached by the sun and wind and waves, that I had the previous summer found upon the beach at the Island.

(I believe this old man's visit coincided with the time when I was worst, almost in danger.) After he had made one or two revolutions about the room, he quickly and silently began to rise from the floor.