Still no brownie appeared, and, hard and straight as was the wooden chair on which he sat, he began to doze.

Presently he started wide awake, fancying he heard a noise; but nothing was there.

He raised his book once more, and read until he had finished the stories in it: for the verse he had no inclination that night.

As soon as they were all consumed, he began to feel very eerie: his courage had been sheltering itself behind his thoughts, which the tales he had been reading had kept turned away from the object of dread.

Still deeper and deeper grew the night around him, until the bare, soulless waste of it came at last, when a brave man might welcome any ghost for the life it would bring.