e and wrote and wrote, till it seemed as if my
life blood went from me with every drop of ink I used. Always alert
and listening, I dared not lift my head or turn my eyes at any unusual
sound, lest I should seem to be watching. The third night I had a dream;
I have already told Mr. Raymond what it was, and hence will not repeat
it here. One correction, however, I wish to make in regard to it. In my
statement to him I declared that the face of the man whom I saw lift his
hand against my employer was that of Mr. Clavering. I lied when I said
this. The face seen by me in my dream was my own. It was that fact
which made it so horrible to me. In the crouching figure stealing warily
down-stairs, I saw as in a glass the vision of my own form. Otherwise my
account of the matter was true.

This vision had a tremendous effect upon me. Was it a premonition? a
forewarning of the way in which I was to win this coveted creature for
my own? Was the death of her uncle the bridge by which the impassable
gulf between us might be spanned? I began to think it might be; to
consider the possibilities which could make this the only path to
my elysium; even went so far as to picture her lovely face bending
gratefully towards me through the glare of a sudden release from some
emergency in which she stood. One thing was sure; if that was the way I
must go, I had at least been taught how to tread it; and all through the
dizzy, blurred day that followed, I saw, as I sat at my work, repeated
visions of that stealthy, purposeful figure stealing down the stairs
and entering with uplifted pistol into the unconscious presence of my
employer. I even found myself a dozen times that day turning my eyes
upon the door through which it was to come, wondering how long it would
be before my actual form would pause there. That the moment was at hand
I did not imagine. Even when I left him that night after drinking with
him the glass of sherry mentioned at the inquest, I had no idea the hour
of action was so near. But when, not three minutes after going upstairs,
I caught the sound of a lady's dress rustling through the hall, and
listening, heard Mary Leavenworth pass my door on her way to the
library, I realized that the fatal hour was come; that something
was going to be said or done in that room which would make this deed
necessary. What? I determined to ascertain. Casting about in my mind
for the means of doing so, I remembered that the ventilator running
up