deepest, some on the floor, some in the window recesses, until at last my seventeen candles were so arranged that not an inch of the room but had the direct light of at least one of them.  It occurred to me that when the ghost came, I could warn him not to trip over them.  The room was now quite brightly illuminated.  There was something very cheery and reassuring in these little streaming flames, and snuffing them gave me an occupation, and afforded a helpful sense of the passage of time.  Even with that, however, the brooding expectation of the vigil weighed heavily upon me.  It was after midnight that the candle in the alcove suddenly went out, and the black shadow sprang back to its place there.  I did not see the candle go out; I simply turned and saw that the darkness was there, as one might start and see the unexpected presence of a stranger.  “By Jove!” said I aloud; “that draught’s a strong one!” and, taking the matches from the table, I walked across the room in a leisurely manner, to relight the corner again.  My first match would not strike, and as I succeeded with the second, something seemed to blink on the wall before me.  I turned my head involuntarily, and saw that the two candles on the little table by the fireplace were extinguished.  I rose at once to my feet.

“Odd!” I said.  “Did I do that myself in a flash of absent-mindedness?”

I walked back, relit one, and as I did so, I saw the candle in the right sconce of one of the mirrors wink and go right out, and almost immediately its companion followed it.  There was no mistake about it.  The flame vanished, as if the wicks had been suddenly nipped between a finger and a thumb, leaving the wick neither glowing nor smoking, but black.  While I stood gaping, the candle at the foot of the bed went out, and the shadows seemed to take another step towards me.

“This won’t do!” said I, and first one and then another candle on the mantelshelf followed.

“What’s up?” I cried, with a queer high note getting into my voice somehow.  At that the candle on the wardrobe went out, and the one I had relit in the alcove followed.

“Steady on!” I said.  “These candles are wanted,” speaking with a half-hysterical facetiousness, and scratching away at a match the while for the mantel candlesticks.  My hands trembled so much that twice I missed the rough paper of the matchbox.  As the mantel emerged from darkness again, two candles in the remoter end of the window were eclipsed.  But with the same match I also relit the larger mirror candles, and those on the floor near the doorway, so that for the moment I seemed to gain on the extinctions.  But then in a volley there vanished four lights at once in different corners of the room, and I struck another match in quivering haste, and stood hesitating whither to take it.