“An hour before, I had been laughing at apparitions, to reassure my little serving-lad; but you know how it is with dreams. Very often some careless word heard or spoken in the course of the day, and forgotten the next moment, proves to be the seed from which they blossom mysteriously, and without our own consciousness; and so we bear them in our minds until night, when, as soon as our eyes are shut and our reason is asleep, they rise up before our deluded vision in fantastic forms, endowed now with tenfold their real significance, and, perhaps, horror.
“It must be, it seems to me, that hallucinations—that is, waking dreams—obey exactly the same law. I had ended my supper, and was about lighting my pipe, when suddenly there swept through the room a shrill, melancholy sound, like that of the wind when it rushes through a door suddenly opened; the air was at the same time stirred and chilled, and the flames of the candles that stood upon the table flickered. At the moment, I happened to be looking towards the door of the vestibule, and seeing that this was firmly fastened and motionless, I supposed that Nils had awaked, and had opened the opposite door, that of the guard-room.
“‘Ah!’ I cried, as I got up, ‘there you are again! Do go to sleep, will you, you cursed little coward!’
“I stepped to the door, thinking that the little rascal had not ventured to open it wide, but had only set it ajar, to be sure I had not gone away. But this door was shut as tight as the other.
“Had the child closed it again when he saw that I was there, and had the slight sound he must have made escaped me, while I was looking for my pipe and refilling the stove? It was possible. I went into the guard-room, but Nils was fast asleep, with his little fists clenched. Evidently he had not stirred. I covered up the fire in the chimney, for fear of some accident, and came back into this room, where everything was still. The melancholy whistling was not repeated. I concluded that a gust of wind had come in through some open joint somewhere in the wood-work, and resumed my pipe, and the papers which I was examining for the baron.
“This business was a rather intricate and subtle law question, and was quite interesting to me, but I need not trouble you with it. All I need say is, that it involved a certain contract for the sale of property executed some time ago by Baron Adelstan; and that his name, as well as that of his wife Hilda de Blixen, were repeated in almost every sentence of the instrument. The names of this married couple, both of whom died in the flower of their age, one in a tragical and mysterious manner, and the other in this very room, and probably in that same unfurnished and dilapidated old bed in the opposite corner, may have made some impression upon my mind, of which I was not conscious. I was quite absorbed in my examination, and the fire in the stove was roaring well, when I thought I heard a creaking on the staircase, several times repeated. I was quite startled, and at the same time was so ashamed of my own emotion, that I would not even turn my head round to see what it was. It was not surprising that the damp old wood-work was beginning to feel the effects of the hot fire in the stove, and that it should occasionally emit these unaccustomed sounds.
“I went on with my reading again; but now, the creaking of the steps and the balustrade was followed by a different sound, not unlike the rasping of an iron tool on the wall, guided by a hand so feeble and uncertain, that it might easily have been mistaken, at moments, for the scratching of a rat among those old maps. I looked up, but seeing nothing, kept on with my work, for I would not permit myself to be disturbed by these unaccountable noises, peculiar to all such old rooms, and which are always occasioned in the simplest manner. It is silly to be searching for the causes of such things, when one has more important business to attend to.
“However, a third and still a different sound compelled me to turn round again, and look once more at the staircase. I could hear the large parchment map, that covers the built-up door, shaking and crackling in a singular manner. I saw it rise up repeatedly; it shook upon the rings by which it hangs, and stood out, as if some body, not unlike a human form, was moving behind it. For the moment, I was startled in good earnest. It was possible that some thief had managed to secrete himself there, and was waiting for an opportunity to spring out upon me. I jumped up hastily to take my sword from the chair, where I had laid it when I came in, but it was not there.”
“For a sufficient reason, I regret to say,” observed Christian. “It was at my side.”
“I do not know,” resumed M. Goefle, “whether I concluded that Ulphilas, with unusual neatness and solicitude, had put away the weapon. The truth is that I had not looked in my portmanteau, and had not been at all uneasy at not finding my clothes, which I had hung upon the back of the arm-chair. I am not in the habit of attending to such matters myself, and most probably had entirely forgotten having placed them there. Not seeing the sword, I had time to collect myself a little, and to make up my mind that I was unnecessarily alarmed. Nobody could want to kill me, and if a robber had taken a fancy to my purse, the wisest course would be to let him have the small amount it contained without resistance.