At the termination of this sentence I started, and, for a moment,
paused; for it appeared to me (although I at once concluded that my
excited fancy had deceived me)--it appeared to me that, from some very
remote portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears,
what might have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo
(but a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and ripping
sound which Sir Launcelot had so particularly described. It was, beyond
doubt, the coincidence alone which had arrested my attention; for, amid
the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and the ordinary commingled
noises of the still increasing storm, the sound, in itself, had nothing,
surely, which should have interested or disturbed me. I continued the
story:

"But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was sore
enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit; but,
in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious demeanour, and
of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace of gold, with a
floor of silver; and upon the wall there hung a shield of shining brass
with this legend enwritten--

Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin;
Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win;

and Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the dragon,
which fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath, with a shriek so
horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing, that Ethelred had fain to
close his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise of it, the like
whereof was never before heard."

Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild
amazement--for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this instance,
I did actually hear (although from what direction it proceeded I found
it impossible to say) a low and apparently distant, but harsh,
protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating sound--the exact
counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up for the dragon's
unnatural shriek as described by the romancer.

Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of the second and
most extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand conflicting sensations, in
which wonder and extreme terror were predominant, I still retained
sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any observation, the
sensitive nervousness of my companion. I was by no means certain that he
had noticed the sounds in question; although, assuredly, a str