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Otago Witness, Issue 2545, 24 December 1902, Page 35 (Supplement)

trees, struck chill and damp. A distinct shiver ran through me as my foot pressed the threshold and Anna's teeth actually chattered. She leaned so heavily on me that I knew she was faint, and quickly put my arm round her waist to support her. " Show us to Miss Gresham's room," I said to one of the maids, " and please light a fire directly ; this cold is very bad for her." I supported her thither, Mrs Gresham fussing around, and arranging and disarranging everything half a dozen times a minute, and Mr Gresham growling audibly at the delay. " Such a fuss about nothing ; it's enough to make the girl ill. It i 3 ridiculous to humour absurd fancies in this way." Anna's bedroom was handsomely, even luxuriously, furnished. I was agreeably surprised at the elegance of the

appointments and general air of comfort. The aspect alone did not please me. It was at an angle of the house, facing the south, and consequently not a ray of direct sunshine could at any time enter it, it was also on the ground floor, flush with the soil, so that any damp or malarious exhalations were naturally drawn up into it; and, in spite of the pretty furniture and hangings, the atmosphere was distinctly raw and chill. Anna felt it keenly, but when a good fire had been lighted by my directions, and she sat with her feet on the hearth sipping a cup of hot bovril, she was able to laugh at her nervousness. " What a fool I am, Rhoda," she said (for we had agreed to call each other by our Christian names ; it seemed less formal, and, above all things, I desired her to look upon me as a friend who might be implicitly trusted), " what a fool I am; I actually hate this house, and, above all, this room. And yet it is not so bad, is it ? "

" It is a very pretty room," I said, looking critically round on the handsome furniture of polished rimu. The bedstead, especially, was beautifully made, the knots and roots of the wood having been skilfully utilised to form strange and grotesque figures, which by a pardonable stretch of the imagination, reminded one of the gargoyles and weird forms so often found in the remote corners of old cathedrals, in which the workmen have tried to embody quaint psychic personations of sin and mystery. I said this to Anna, and she immediately agreed with me. " Do you see that mark in the centre of the footboard. Mr Gresham says it is like the head of a tiger ; but no tiger ever had such a strange expression — half animal, half human, wholly devilish. I have looked at it until I have

seen such envy, hatred, and malice grow in its eyes, ariS such an embodied hell in every lineament that I could have screamed aloud in terror. And that's not all. Look at those faces in the wardrobe. Sometimes they are merely marks in the wood, and at others they grin and gloat and rejoice in all malignity. The very dressing table has a harpy over the glass." " If you feel like that," I said, very naturally, " why do you continue to occupy this room? Why not change to some other? Surely there must be many more than are occupied in this large house; and you would be better upstairs in a sunny aspect." " It's not so easy as you might think," returned Anna, toasting her toes at the fire, which crackled and blazed with a delightfully homelike and familiar sound. " This is the best room, and should have been occupied by my mother. She

gave it up to me as a great favour, and insists upon my using it. It would be ungracious to refuse or complain; and indeed there is nothing to complain of. I can't say the faces in the wood grin at me, can I? People would think I was mad. Cannot you fancy how they would look." By " they " she meant Mr Gresham, whose name she never voluntarily mentioned. I could fancy it, and saw some cause for her scruples. " Well, at any rate the faces can't hurt you," I said, cheerfully, " and as for the one on the footboard, I'll throw this plaid over it, and then you won't see it, and it will trouble you no more." " But I shall know that it is there," she said, emphatically. And I was sorry to see that this fancy had taken such

entire hold on her imagination, that it would be difficult to cast it out. We sat a little time over the fire talking ; then I helped her to undress, and read to her till she seemed sleepy, when I sought my own room. Before that, however, Mrs Gresham came in, and insisted on arranging and disarranging everything; removing the plaid which I had thrown over the footboard, shifting almost every chair and ornament in. the room, and insisting several times over that I must extinguish every spark of fire before I" went to bed. " Else we may all be burned in our beds. I have such a horrible dread of fire. Oblige me by promising this." I would have promised much more to expedite her departure, for I saw that Anna's chances of sleep were di-