footing, and then I remember no more.

I opened my eyes in daylight. My head was roughly bandaged, and the man

with the withered hand was watching my face. I looked about me trying

to remember what had happened, and for a space I could not recollect.

I rolled my eyes into the corner and saw the old woman, no longer

abstracted, no longer terrible, pouring out some drops of medicine

from a little blue phial into a glass. "Where am I?" I said. "I seem to

remember you, and yet I can not remember who you are."

They told me then, and I heard of the haunted Red Room as one who bears

a tale. "We found you at dawn," said he, "and there was blood on your

forehead and lips."

I wondered that I had ever disliked him. The three of them in the

daylight seemed commonplace old folk enough. The man with the green

shade had his head bent as one who sleeps.

It was very slowly I recovered the memory of my experience. "You

believe now," said the old man with the withered hand, "that the room is

haunted?" He spoke no longer as one who greets an intruder, but as one

who condoles with a friend.

"Yes," said I, "the room is haunted."

"And you have seen it. And we who have been here all our lives have

The Red Room