some years ago there lived in the suburbs of a large seaport town on the west coast of england a man in humble circumstances, by name isaac scatchard. his means of subsistence were derived from any employment that he could get as an hostler, and occasionally, when times went well with him, from temporary engagements in service as stable-helper in private houses. though a faithful, steady, and honest man, he got on badly in his calling. his ill luck was proverbial among his neighbors. he was always missing good opportunities by no fault of his own, and always living longest in service with amiable people who were not punctual payers of wages. “unlucky isaac” was his nickname in his own neighborhood, and no one could say that he did not richly deserve it.

with far more than one man’s fair share of adversity to endure, isaac had but one consolation to support him, and that was of the dreariest and most negative kind. he had no wife and children to increase his anxieties and add to the bitterness of his various failures in life. it might have been from mere insensibility, or it might have been from generous unwillingness to involve another in his own unlucky destiny, but the fact undoubtedly was, that he had arrived at the middle term of life without marrying, and, what is much more remarkable, without once exposing himself, from eighteen to eight-and-thirty, to the genial imputation of ever having had a sweetheart.

when he was out of service he lived alone with his widowed mother. mrs. scatchard was a woman above the average in her lowly station as to capacity and manners. she had seen better days, as the phrase is, but she never referred to them in the presence of curious visitors; and, though perfectly polite to every one who approached her, never cultivated any intimacies among her neighbors. she contrived to provide, hardly enough, for her simple wants by doing rough work for the tailors, and always managed to keep a decent home for her son to return to whenever his ill luck drove him out helpless into the world.

one bleak autumn when isaac was getting on fast toward forty and when he was as usual out of place through no fault of his own, he set forth, from his mother’s cottage on a long walk inland to a gentleman’s seat where he had heard that a stable-helper was required.

it wanted then but two days of his birthday; and mrs. scatchard, with her usual fondness, made him promise, before he started, that he would be back in time to keep that anniversary with her, in as festive a way as their poor means would allow. it was easy for him to comply with this request, even supposing he slept a night each way on the road.

he was to start from home on monday morning, and, whether he got the new place or not, he was to be back for his birthday dinner on wednesday at two o’clock.

arriving at his destination too late on the monday night to make application for the stablehelper’s place, he slept at the village inn, and in good time on the tuesday morning presented himself at the gentleman’s house to fill the vacant situation. here again his ill luck pursued him as inexorably as ever. the excellent written testimonials to his character which he was able to produce availed him nothing; his long walk had been taken in vain: only the day before the stable-helper’s place had been given to another man.

isaac accepted this new disappointment resignedly and as a matter of course. naturally slow in capacity, he had the bluntness of sensibility and phlegmatic patience of disposition which frequently distinguish men with sluggishly-working mental powers. he thanked the gentleman’s steward with his usual quiet civility for granting him an interview, and took his departure with no appearance of unusual depression in his face or manner.

before starting on his homeward walk he made some inquiries at the inn, and ascertained that he might save a few miles on his return by following the new road. furnished with full instructions, several times repeated, as to the various turnings he was to take, he set forth on his homeward journey and walked on all day with only one stoppage for bread and cheese. just as it was getting toward dark, the rain came on and the wind began to rise, and he found himself, to make matters worse, in a part of the country with which he was entirely unacquainted, though he knew himself to be some fifteen miles from home. the first house he found to inquire at was a lonely roadside inn, standing on the outskirts of a thick wood. solitary as the place looked, it was welcome to a lost man who was also hungry, thirsty, footsore and wet. the landlord was civil and respectable-looking, and the price he asked for a bed was reasonable enough. isaac therefore decided on stopping comfortably at the inn for that night.

he was constitutionally a temperate man.

his supper consisted of two rashers of bacon, a slice of home-made bread and a pint of ale. he did not go to bed immediately after this moderate meal, but sat up with the landlord, talking about his bad prospects and his long run of ill-luck, and diverging from these topics to the subjects of horse-flesh and racing. nothing was said either by himself, his host, or the few laborers who strayed into the tap-room, which could, in the slightest degree, excite the very small and very dull imaginative faculty which isaac scatchard possessed.

at a little after eleven the house was closed. isaac went round with the landlord and held the candle while the doors and lower windows were being secured. he noticed with surprise the strength of the bolts and bars, and iron-sheathed shutters.

“you see, we are rather lonely here,” said the landlord. “we never have had any attempts made to break in yet, but it’s always as well to be on the safe side. when nobody is sleeping here, i am the only man in the house. my wife and daughter are timid, and the servant-girl takes after her missuses. another glass of ale before you turn in? no! well, how such a sober man as you comes to be out of place is more than i can make out, for one. here’s where you’re to sleep. you’re our only lodger to-night, and i think you’ll say my missus has done her best to make you comfortable. you’re quite sure you won’t have another glass of ale? very well. good-night.”

it was half-past eleven by the clock in the passage as they went upstairs to the bedroom, the window of which looked on to the wood at the back of the house.

isaac locked the door, set his candle on the chest of drawers, and wearily got ready for bed.

the bleak autumn wind was still blowing, and the solemn, monotonous, surging moan of it in the wood was dreary and awful to hear through the night-silence. isaac felt strangely wakeful.

he resolved, as he lay down in bed, to keep the candle alight until he began to grow sleepy, for there was something unendurably depressing in the bare idea of lying awake in the darkness, listening to the dismal, ceaseless moaning of the wind in the wood.

sleep stole on him before he was aware of it. his eyes closed, and he fell off insensibly to rest without having so much as thought of extinguishing the candle.

the first sensation of which he was conscious after sinking into slumber was a strange shivering that ran through him suddenly from head to foot, and a dreadful sinking pain at the heart, such as he had never felt before. the shivering only disturbed his slumbers; the pain woke him instantly. in one moment he passed from a state of sleep to a state of wakefulness — his eyes wide open — his mental perceptions cleared on a sudden, as if by a miracle.

the candle had burned down nearly to the last morsel of tallow, but the top of the unsnuffed wick had just fallen off, and the light in the little room was, for the moment, fair and full.

between the foot of his bed and the closed door there stood a woman with a knife in her hand, looking at him.

he was stricken speechless with terror, but he did not lose the preternatural clearness of his faculties, and he never took his eyes off the woman. she said not a word as they stared each other in the face, but she began to move slowly toward the left-hand side of the bed.

his eyes followed her. she was a fair, fine woman, with yellowish flaxen hair and light gray eyes, with a droop in the left eyelid. he noticed those things and fixed them on his mind before she was round at the side of the bed. speechless, with no expression in her face, with no noise following her footfall, she came closer and closer — stopped — and slowly raised the knife. he laid his right arm over his throat to save it; but, as he saw the knife coming down, threw his hand across the bed to the right side, and jerked his body over that way just as the knife descended on the mattress within an inch of his shoulder.

his eyes fixed on her arm and hand as she slowly drew her knife out of the bed: a white, well-shaped arm, with a pretty down lying lightly over the fair skin — a delicate lady’s hand, with the crowning beauty of a pink flush under and round the finger-nails.

she drew the knife out, and passed back again slowly to the foot of the bed; stopped there for a moment looking at him; then came on — still speechless, still with no expression on the blank, beautiful face, still with no sound following the stealthy footfalls — came on to the right side of the bed, where he now lay.

as she approached, she raised the knife again, and he drew himself away to the left side. she struck, as before, right into the mattress, with a deliberate, perpendicularly downward action of the arm. this time his eyes wandered from her to the knife. it was like the large clasp-knives which he had often seen laboring men use to cut their bread and bacon with. her delicate little fingers did not conceal more than two-thirds of the handle: he noticed that it was made of buck-horn, clean and shining as the blade was, and looking like new.

for the second time she drew the knife out, concealed it in the wide sleeve of her gown, then stopped by the bedside, watching him. for an instant he saw her standing in that position, then the wick of the spent candle fell over into the socket; the flame diminished to a little blue point, and the room grew dark.

a moment, or less, if possible, passed so, and then the wick flamed up, smokingly, for the last time. his eyes were still looking eagerly over the right-hand side of the bed when the final flash of light came, but they discovered nothing. the fair woman with the knife was gone.

the conviction that he was alone again weakened the hold of the terror that had struck him dumb up to this time. the preternatural sharpness which the very intensity of his panic had mysteriously imparted to his faculties left them suddenly. his brain grew confused — his heart beat wildly — his ears opened for the first time since the appearance of the woman to a sense of the woeful ceaseless moaning of the wind among the trees. with the dreadful conviction of the reality of what he had seen still strong within him, he leaped out of bed, and screaming “murder! wake up, there! wake up!” dashed headlong through the darkness to the door.

it was fast locked, exactly as he had left it on going to bed.

his cries on starting up had alarmed the house. he heard the terrified, confused exclamations of women; he saw the master of the house approaching along the passage with his burning rush-candle in one hand and his gun in the other.

“what is it?” asked the landlord, breathlessly. isaac could only answer in a whisper. “a woman, with a knife in her hand,” he gasped out. “in my room — a fair, yellow-haired woman; she jobbed at me with the knife twice over.”

the landlord’s pale cheeks grew paler. he looked at isaac eagerly by the flickering light of his candle, and his face began to get red again; his voice altered, too, as well as his complexion.

“she seems to have missed you twice,” he said.

“i dodged the knife as it came down,” isaac went on, in the same scared whisper. “it struck the bed each time.”

the landlord took his candle into the bedroom immediately. in less than a minute he came out again into the passage in a violent passion.

“the devil fly away with you and your woman with the knife! there isn’t a mark in the bedclothes anywhere. what do you mean by coming into a man’s place and frightening his family out of their wits about a dream?”

“i’ll leave your house,” said isaac, faintly. “better out on the road, in rain and dark, on my road home, than back again in that room, after what i’ve seen in it. lend me a light to get my clothes by, and tell me what i’m to pay.”

“pay!” cried the landlord, leading the way with his light sulkily into the bedroom. “you’ll find your score on the slate when you go downstairs. i wouldn’t have taken you in for all the money you’ve got about you if i’d known your dreaming, screeching ways beforehand. look at the bed. where’s the cut of a knife in it? look at the window — is the lock bursted? look at the door (which i heard you fasten yourself)— is it broke in? a murdering woman with a knife in my house! you ought to be ashamed of yourself!”

isaac answered not a word. he huddled on his clothes, and then they went downstairs together.

“nigh on twenty minutes past two!” said the landlord, as they passed the clock. “a nice time in the morning to frighten honest people out of their wits!”

isaac paid his bill, and the landlord let him out at the front door, asking, with a grin of contempt, as he undid the strong fastenings, whether “the murdering woman got in that way.”

they parted without a word on either side. the rain had ceased, but the night was dark, and the wind bleaker than ever. little did the darkness, or the cold, or the uncertainty about the way home matter to isaac. if he had been turned out into a wilderness in a thunder-storm it would have been a relief after what he had suffered in the bedroom of the inn.

what was the fair woman with the knife? the creature of a dream, or that other creature from the unknown world called among men by the name of ghost? he could make nothing of the mystery — had made nothing of it, even when it was midday on wednesday, and when he stood, at last, after many times missing his road, once more on the doorstep of home.