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That, at least, the reader must bear
distinctly in mind.

XVI.
THE RED ROOM.

"I can assure you," said I, "that it will take a very tangible ghost to
frighten me." And I stood up before the fire with my glass in my hand.
"It is your own choosing," said the man with the withered arm, and glanced
at me askance.
"Eight-and-twenty years," said I, "I have lived, and never a ghost have I
seen as yet."
The old woman sat staring hard into the fire, her pale eyes wide open.
"Ay," she broke in; "and eight-and-twenty years you have lived and never
seen the likes of this house, I reckon. There's a many things to see, when
one's still but eight-and-twenty." She swayed her head slowly from side to
side. "A many things to see and sorrow for."
I half suspected the old people were trying to enhance the spiritual
terrors of their house by their droning insistence. I put down my empty
glass on the table and looked about the room, and caught a glimpse of
myself, abbreviated and broadened to an impossible sturdiness, in the
queer old mirror at the end of the room.


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