…lady had given me strict injunctions not to do so.”The safe, where the diamonds had always” been kept, stood by the bedside on the top of a black oak chest, and as I set to work on it with my tools, I couldn’t help laughing to think what a precious trick it was, searching for what I knew wasn’t there — for what I knew only too well was safe and snug in the lady’s keeping, if not actually on its way to Amsterdam to be sold!”It did not take me many seconds to crack the lid of the safe open, and I had just done so, when there was a blaze of light, a loud shriek, and, on turning round, I saw the lady.”Softly, ma’am,”” I whispered, “” you’re a bit” too soon! You should have waited till I was ready to be off. I have kept my part…

…way in this manner, when I suddenly saw, stretched across our track, a white coffin which rose up on end, and shook off its lid, and disclosed to my startled eyes a man, clad from head to foot in red tights. Stepping out from his prison, he placed his fingers in his mouth and whistled shrilly, whereupon the scene once more changed and I found myself back again in the forest, sitting at the foot of a huge, black tree, with the red man opposite me. “You are fond of music? He said,” Then listen!” and placing a flute to his lips, he blew. The most ghastly, the most hellish of noises rang through the forest, and, ere my shocked senses had time to recover I found myself once again in motion — this time on my own legs — with all the trees, headed by the red man, in…