ssure myself that nothing could be lurking there. The shutter was a
little open, and the ivied tower of the little church, and the tufted
tops of the trees that surrounded it, were visible over the slope of the
intervening hill. I hastily shut out the unwelcome object, and in a mood
of mind, I must confess, favorable enough to any freak my nerves might
please to play me, I hurried through my dispositions for the night,
humming a gay air all the time, to re-assure myself, and plunged into
bed, extinguishing the candle, and--shall I acknowledge the weakness?
nearly burying my head under the blankets.

I lay awake some time, as men will do under such circumstances, but at
length fatigue overcame me, and I fell into a profound sleep. From this
repose I was, however, aroused in the manner I am about to describe. A
very considerable interval must have intervened. There was a cold air in
the room very unlike the comfortable atmosphere in which I had composed
myself to sleep. The fire, though much lower than when I had gone to
bed, was still emitting flame enough to throw a flickering light over
the chamber. My curtains were, however, closely drawn, and I could not
see beyond the narrow tent in which I lay.

There had been as I awaked a clanking among the fire-irons, as if a
palsied hand was striving to arrange the fire, and this rather
unaccountable noise continued for some seconds after I had become
completely awake.

Under the impression that I was subjected to an accidental intrusion, I
called out, first in a gentle and afterward in a sharper tone,

"Who's there?"

At the second summons the sound ceased, and I heard instead the tread of
naked feet, as it seemed to me, upon the floor, pacing to and fro,
between the hearth and the bed in which I lay. A superstitious terror,
which I could not combat, stole over me; with an effort I repeated my
question, and drawing myself upright in the bed, expected the answer
with a strange sort of trepidation. It came in terms and accompanied
with accessories which I shall not soon forget.

The very same tones which had so startled me in the church-yard the
evening before, the very sounds which I had heard then and there, were
now filling my ears, and spoken in the chamber where I lay.

"Why will you trouble the dead? Who can torment us before the time? I
will come to you in my flesh, 'though after my skin worms destroy this
body,' and you shall speak with me face to face."

As I l