The limit, I think, was eighteen months. There were
local tales of his having exerted his powers of prog-
nosis, or perhaps you would say diagnosis; and it
was said that in every instance the person whose
friends he had warned had died suddenly at the
appointed time, and from no assignable cause. All
this, however, has nothing to do with what I have
to tell; I thought it might amuse a physician.
'The house was furnished, just as he had lived in
it. It was a rather gloomy dwelling for one who was
neither a recluse nor a student, and I think it gave
something of its character to me--perhaps some
of its former occupant's character; for always I felt
in it a certain melancholy that was not in my natural
disposition, nor, I think, due to loneliness. I had no
servants that slept in the house, but I have always
been, as you know, rather fond of my own society,
being much addicted to reading, though little to
study. Whatever was the cause, the effect was dejec-
tion and a sense of impending evil; this was espe-
cially so in Dr. Mannering's study, although that
room was the lightest and most airy in the house.
The doctor's life-size portrait in oil hung in that
room, and seemed completely to dominate it. There
was nothing unusual in the picture; the man was
evidently rather good looking, about fifty years old,
with iron-grey hair, a smooth-shaven face and dark,
serious eyes. Something in the picture always drew
and held my attention.
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