river, so that I saw clearly this figure walking quickly away in the direction of the Ponte Aleardi. It was draped in a long black cloak with a monkish hood, and with its trailing, noiseless garments it seemed to glide along in the moonlight like a shadow.

I had been so quick in my pursuit that it was only a little distance away, and as I peered cautiously over the broken wall it paused for a moment, and, throwing back its hood, looked towards the place where I was hiding. The space between us was so small and the moonlight so lustrous that I could see the face and head plainly rising from amid the dark drapery.

The face was that of a woman, a beautiful woman with full crimson lips, large dark eyes, and great masses of reddish-coloured hair, for even in the cold moonlight I could see the warm, bronze glint of her tresses. One hand, slender and white, clasped the dark robe to her breast, and she looked towards the darkness of the broken wall as if she knew that some one had seen her terrible resurrection. On her delicate features there was a cold, stern look, like that of the ancient Medusa, and truly I felt as if I were turning into stone before the cruel glare of those eyes which seemed to pierce the gloom in which I lay hid. It will be said that I describe somewhat minutely the appearance of this ghoul, seeing that I only beheld her for a moment in the pale, uncertain gleam of the moon; but so close was she to the wall, and so highly strung were my nerves by the weirdness of the situation, that the sudden apparition of this creature of the night photographed itself indelibly on my brain.

At last she seemed satisfied with her gazing at the burial-ground from whence she had emerged, and, again drawing her hood over her face, glided rapidly away towards the Ponte Aleardi. Moved by curiosity and supernatural fear, I determined to follow this spectre and find out where she was going, so without a moment's hesitation I jumped down, and, keeping in the shadow of the wall, stole after her noiselessly and swiftly.

Who was she? Some unhappy ghost of antique Verona, who had committed one of those terrible crimes invented by Lucrezia Borgia, and who was condemned by God to nightly revisit the scene of her former splendour as a punishment for her evil life? Some ghoul who left the feast of the dead in order to prey upon the living? Some vampire, lusting for blood, hastening towards the sleeping city to select her victim and drain him of his life-blood? All the wild, weird tales which I had heard recurred to my memory; all the terrible legends of Brittany, of the East, of Spain, and of 

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