ncelot.

* * * * * * * *

No sooner had these syllables passed my lips than--as if a shield of
brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of
silver--I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic, and clangorous,
yet apparently muffled, reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped
to my feet; but the measured, rocking movement of Usher was
undisturbed. I rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were
bent fixedly before him, and throughout his whole countenance there
reigned a stony rigidity. But as I placed my hand upon his shoulder
there came a strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile
quivered about his lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and
gibbering manner, as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely
over him, I at length drank in the hideous import of his words.

"Not hear it? Yes, I hear it, and _have_ heard it.
Long--long--long--many minutes, many hours, many days have I heard
it--yet I _dared_ not--O, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!--I
_dared_ not--I dared not speak! _We have put her living in the tomb_!
Said I not that my senses were acute? I _now_ tell you that I heard
her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them many,
many days ago--yet I dared not--I _dared not speak_! And
now--to-night--Ethelred--ha! ha!--the breaking of the hermit's door,
and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangor of the shield!--say,
rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges
of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the
vault! O, whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not
hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on
the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her
heart? Madman!"--here he sprang furiously to his feet and shrieked out
his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his
soul--"_Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door_!"

As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found
the potency of a spell, the huge antique panels to which the speaker
pointed threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony
jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust; but then without those
doors there _did_ stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the Lady
Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the
evidence of some bitter struggle upo